Season of the Witch: A SHIELD Codex
by KhamanV
Summary: When horror engulfs a Pennsylvanian town at the edge of abandoned Centralia, the Agents of SHIELD are called to investigate. But when their strangest agent, Loki, fast realizes he knows more about what's going on than he ever wanted to admit, the investigation takes a dark turn into understanding the history of not only the cursed region, but the birth of Chaos itself.
1. Black Smoke

Season of the Witch: a SHIELD Codex

 _You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. ~ Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan_

1\. Black Smoke

 _Columbia County, Pennsylvania_ -

The storm hit just after seven in the morning as the sun began to rise still summertime hot in the October sky. The sun's soft orange glow abruptly gave way to violent red painted along the breadth of the clouds, and then those once-fluffy puffs looked hard and dark as jet as the wind blew hellfire steam south across the dead zones and into the struggling small towns that shared the southernmost edge of the county line. It cut power lines and crashed old trees to the ground as it passed, like a giant striding through an unnatural night. Newscasters spoke into dead air as storm alarms thrummed through the black, but the people knew to get low and get safe without them.

Twenty-seven minutes of whirlwind nature, screaming its fury out to anyone that would listen. Windows slammed shut to defend the occupants within, autumnal flowers hammered down outside even while a few brave and frantic tenders tried to care for them in dirty shorts meant for last month and the month before. Plastic skeletons peeled from front doors and fluttered against the relentless onslaught while carved pumpkins shook and rolled, and almost forgotten radios sparked into life to tell hunkering, hopeful kids that they were not going to school today after all.

By eight the sun had begun to poke out from behind the withering veil of grey again, almost apologetically beating the heat back down hard enough to bring mist up from the asphalt in winding trails that looked, to the excited kids now spilling outside, like ghosts. One good week of fall weather laid in the recent past; cool and gloomy light rains and softer winds that carried the almost subliminal scents of spice and pine. Now it was gone again in favor of summer's already too-long stay full of muggy discomfort, and the towns shrugged and got on with their morning anyway, waiting for the electric buzz to come back to the air.

At nine, a few generators popped into life to cool the older folks that lived in the ivy-covered homes set far back from the roads along Ashland's Centre drive. Neighbors popped out into the streets, sweating and grumpy, to look for the PPL service trucks that were stolidly not appearing. A few delayed workers got onto the roads to find backups everywhere they went, the trees they'd heard distantly crashing becoming something annoying real in the background noise of their daily lives. They honked at the trees, they honked at each other, and most eventually turned their way back home, pissed off and unable to do anything about it.

And as nine o clock became the misty heat of ten without the relief of AC or cool water yet in sight for most, the puffs of white mist on the roads blew away, there in the little almost one-road town that lay south of abandoned Centralia, and what followed in its wake was a coal-miner's gloom as dead and filthy black as the storm before.

. . .

Aggie stood in the tiny kitchenette of the home she still owned on the outskirts of that tiny town named Ashland, looking out the water-stained window at the overgrown mess of weeds and herbs gone to seed that made up her lawn. She picked up her old yellow mug and blew once across the surface of the filmy tea inside as she watched the mist on the street puff away, then set the mug down again, forgotten. Her face was a stone mask, and she did not blink often as the sun tried the best it could to take back the morning. Her eyes were bloodshot. How it all usually was, these days.

The mug came up. One soft exhale to unsettle the thin white film, then it was set down again.

The tea had gone cold 'round seven. She had never bothered to take a sip, never glanced left to check the twitching time on the old battery-operated clock above the stove. She stood, there in her tiny kitchen that had last cooked a hot meal close to two years ago, and she watched. Her eyes were itching and strained as she practiced how to not think. It wasn't the storm that troubled Aggie that morning, not yet. It was always the silence inside her mind. That had ghosts in it, too.

The sun gave up and crawled back down behind the black mist boiling over the trees and the glimpse of winding road she had up at the edge of the neighborhood lane, and now she did blink once, looking up as the sky fluttered with fresh ash brought up from somewhere deep in the earth. She reached out and picked up the mug one last time, pouring its contents down the acrid-smelling disposal and turning to move towards the stairs that led down. She kept the mug in her hand this time and snatched up a dry, relatively clean towel from the back of a chair on her way to wipe it out. Why not, she figured. She was going to need something to pour with. Couldn't do worse than something that had recently held fresh water.

There was always a bag of pure, clean salt in the basement. Always.

. . .

 _Forty-six hours later, SHIELD's hidden Playground_ -

Agent Melinda May swept her slow, trained gaze across the open lobby of the shared library onsite agents used for both geopolitical research and to trade the latest crappy thrillers they read during their downtime, and did not acquire her primary target. It meant he was likeliest to be in the nook far back that he'd all but marked out for his own purposes. With a sigh, she marched down an aisle of SHIELD worldbooks so far out of date that at least one had a foreword about the then-recent death of the last king of Prussia.

She wrinkled her nose as the lanes grew narrower and older, then took a swing into a corner of the library now bound in permanent chaotic disarray. The incense burner she had smelled several aisles back wafted out its musky contents from where Loki had stuck it beside a pile of books with spines titled with words even she with a number of languages mastered couldn't identify. The man himself lay on a narrow green and dark-wooded chaise he'd recently rustled up from _somewhere,_ dust sparkling in the air between his slender pale face and the gently dawdling magelights he'd strung up and bound to some sort of ornamental pole. Honestly, it looked like it used to be some kind of a wooden hat-rack.

At some point since the downfall of Thanos at the edge of the galaxy, Loki had discovered quaintly trashy antique shops and taken to them with that half-insane, darkly amused affection that was his trademark.

The library nook he had claimed, not to mention his own quarters, had gone to hell since.

May used the folder in her hand to tap at one of the boundary walls, a thick bookcase that held ordinary but also out of date maps on its other side. He glanced up from the dense, black-bound tome he was reading, eyes dozily parting to give her a cat's quick blink that said _obviously I knew you were there._

She sniffed, an annoyed little inhale that she felt behind her teeth. Now a standard and oddly reliable fixture of SHIELD's central nervous system, Loki _still_ had a particular way of existing that could cause immediate irritation upon exposure. She pursed her lips, then forced the tension in her shoulders to relax.

It wasn't about him, actually, if she got honest with herself. It was the file in her hand. The weird ones. She'd started to hate the weird ones. But it was her turn to get out of the house, according to Coulson, and as long he still held authority, she'd roll with it as best she could. Maybe it would be good for her. Besides. There was nobody better to handle these weird ones than the weird one laying prone right here.

That thought distracted her a moment, making her look away as the drowsy look left Loki's face and replaced itself with a puzzled one instead. She caught the change and looked back, jutting her chin at him. "You been hearing the rumors?"

"The rumors that are, between you and I, not in the least actually rumors but really just a warning of a new reality to come bearing down on us? Those rumors?" He let the tome drop down onto his chest with a rustle of paper, a dangling string from the collar of his dark hoodie acting as an ad hoc bookmark. He arched a black eyebrow in a sardonic quirk that said more than his words did. "I am intensely aware of such rumors, yes."

"What's your read on them?"

Loki shrugged. "I told Phil I was going to stay despite what changes may come. Might have been nice had I been warned that statement was going to become… _challenging_ , but, well. I'm not sure he knew then."

May frowned, realizing she was feeling a tiny jolt of relief about actually bringing it up. Choice of conversational partner be damned. She looked for another seat and found some sort of old cushioned stool he must have picked up on one of his last hunts out. She settled on it, tapping the folder on her own knee next. "What else?"

He studied her, looking almost wary. Fair enough. All trials they'd gone through together aside, she was still usually not the warmest of agents to interact with. "Oddly, I think it's the right decision for him." He slid a few inches upright as she continued to watch him, silent. He sighed. "Coulson is a good leader. One of the best I've encountered, actually. He has a manner of gaining trust and respect that is a right rare feature, and his management of dangerous situations, his ability to make quick decisions under pressure, is not a skill earned lightly." He tilted his head, as if acknowledging the undertone of what he was about to say. "And he is a miserable _ruler_."

"What's the difference?"

"Plenty." Loki laughed. "For one, never trust a ruler that seems to crave the position. Not that I know this personally." He laughed again, low and sardonic. "And he does not crave. There is no hunger in him for what he does now. It makes for a good space of time for a kingdom to flourish within, but it doesn't last. Leaders that fine burn out. Let him stand down while he still has some fire. He'll be better afield, and much the same as he has been before, I expect. Let the new figurehead take the headlines and the heavy crown. I don't know him, this new little lord. Don't think I'll much care to. It won't be the return of that Fury, at least. The _leadership_ , really, will be much the same otherwise."

"You'll have to deal with the new guy. We all will."

He plucked the book from his chest and laid a proper paper mark inside it, putting it down next to the chaise. He looked down at it for a moment, sounding contemplative. "So what? We've handled worse." Then he looked up, quick and abrupt. "What's the file in regards to?"

She waggled it at him. "We got a live one."

"I was told the matter in Norway was a _live one_. It was most assuredly _not_." He swung around to get black-shoed feet on the wood floor, reaching out for the thin manila folder. She passed it over, but he didn't open it yet. He started looking off, contemplative and annoyed both. "Very disappointing. I don't know what I expected, I suppose. _Tulpas_ are not exactly common in Europe. Or anywhere, really. Another sad example of…" He frowned. "The thing with the dog and the fool and the lot in the van."

That got a laugh out of her, a real one. "You got Scooby-Doo'd."

"Trite nonsense. Just so." He sneered, no hostility in it. "This one?"

She leaned back, feeling the warm wood of the bookcase hold her spine up. Surprisingly comfortable. "Lost contact with a small town day before yesterday, in the morning. Power went out after a surprise storm for starters. When I say surprise, I mean that we've scraped every meteorological assessment in the state and it doesn't show up on any radar until it sprung up to kick this place in particular in the teeth. They were caught flat-footed. State power can't get in, nobody is coming out. Hasn't hit the major news yet because it's a very small town, but we've been intercepting some families trying to make contact and they're getting nothing. Not cell reception, not deliveries. It's like they disappeared."

"My attention is duly earned." The file still sat thin between his palms, like a knife's edge. "That sounds almost like a sealing. Such rituals aren't usually strong enough to cover an entire town, however. A great deal of effort involved in setting up etheric walls and cutting off such other earthly access, and so, not the assumption I intend to start with. Where was this?"

"Place called Ashland. Nothing notable." She gestured at the folder, reminding him he could figure it out for himself if he wanted. "Due south of a bunch of central Pennsylvania ghost towns, if that tickles your fancy."

It did not. Loki went deathly still. The narrow face, already naturally fine and pale, visibly drained into cold marble and cracking bone. The effect made him haggard-looking, the soft blue-white of the magelights casting his high cheekbones into darkly chiaroscuro definition. "Central Pennsylvania."

She nodded, taken aback by the rapid transformation but not showing it on her face.

The next was almost in a whisper. "What ghost towns?"

"Well, the famous one. Centralia, with the big underground mine fire that killed the place a few decades back."

He sagged back against the chaise, visibly defeated, rolling his face up to the ceiling and exposing his throat as if he wanted it to be slashed open. "Oh… ruddy, bloody _Hel_."


	2. Books of Blood II

2\. Books of Blood II

 _Over two years ago, in a New York City park:_

 _It was Loki that spoke, as birds fluttered amongst his feet. He watched them, bemused and yet tired as he told a man that would one day be his friend what he had done to resolve certain final matters between them. He had done the best he could, he believed then. He had, to Coulson's real surprise, put paid to new mistakes. Though he would bear the burden of old ones for much longer to come._

 _"I'll not specify where for safety's sake, but I'm sure you'll think to guess a few possibles. As before, I did not think it wise to take it too far from this world, much less away from its partner. Better to let it rot here. To that end, there are certain places in this world where the earth is torn open and what's within burns ceaselessly. I found one of these and dropped it down the darkest hole in the centermost of these hellish fires. The book will not burn, no, but it will deter all but the most insistent. And I did what I could to fox the trail to it, besides."_

 _The_ _ **book**_ _. The blackest book of chaos bound to the material plane, awoken by avarice, stolen from its hidden place and let loose upon the world. Within its pages lived spells to destroy mortal life, words of corruption, rituals of necromancy, the names of dead Gods - and lists of those who had stood against the blood-bound tome and its unholy makers._

 _"Your name is yet written in its pages," warned the sorcerer supreme, later._

 _It._

 _Even to know its name is to open a mage's mind to bleak risks, and the slithering trails of its mayhem words across all the soft places buried inside the brain._

 _The Darkhold._

 _It does not sleep._

 _It_ cannot _sleep._

 _. . ._

"Perhaps that isn't what this is, after all." This, after almost two hours of cold, tense silence in the standard issue black SHIELD van. Loki's voice was almost gaily hopeful, his rich Asgardian accent twanging with falseness. That worried May more than the rest. "Total coincidence perhaps. Just a maddening matter, some minor hedge-mage crawling out of the woodwork to give the town a little scare. Hasn't found _it_ yet, merely set some fires and blocked the roads because they didn't like their property taxes going up. Another gag, really. Cue the irritating dog."

May looked at him where he sat rigidly watching the road as he drove, then looked at where his knuckles wrapped around the dark grey leather of the van's wheel. They were strained tight enough to show pale blood vessels under the white skin. She kept her voice mild in order to keep _him_ mild. "You think that's likely?"

The leather squeaked under his grip, like being strangled. "No."

She nodded, then looked in the back of the van at the tightly packed bags of field supplies and a hardened satellite phone that Loki had done _something_ magical to. Just in case. She knew something had gone more wrong than usual when Loki's next two acts after being delivered the manila folder with the Ashland job had been, first, to snag a bottle of some dark red alcohol he was smuggling in from Asgard, and second, calling Doctor Stephen Strange after taking a heroic swig from said bottle.

It was the call more than the other thing, really. Putting Strange and Loki in the same room often made for the kind of congenial hostility that threatened to choke out all the breathable air. Wizards. She suspected at least 60% of any and all of a mage's magical power relied on harnessing their own raw ego. These two men had an awful lot of that resource between them.

Loki dropping everything to call the other sorcerer directly, without being goaded or ordered to… That was the point where her own stomach had fallen out, putting together worst case scenarios and filing mental action plans.

She hadn't bothered to listen in on the call itself, but connecting the facts together told her that her gut instinct was right. After all, she'd been right there with the rest as the black book tore open a hole through reality itself under Strange's Bleecker Street mansion, and she had seen for herself what the thing could inspire even without that much directed power. What sort of Gods it had served.

Gods like Chthon, the only being the book called its true master. She shook her head, not wanting to revisit the gorier details of the memory. At least she hadn't seen the worst of it. Not like Phil had.

Strange was now on active standby, hence the satphone. They were going in to scout, to see the fringes of what the situation actually was before regathering into a new action plan profile. A simple assessment and rescue operation had just gone full red alert. The second number programmed into the sat was Phil's direct line. Loki had left the red bottle of illicit Asgardian hooch with him. It was shaping up to be that kind of day.

"You dropped this thing in Centralia." She did her best to not make it sound confrontational. It wasn't meant to be. "Why there?"

"Specifically, I dropped it in an exposed hot coal seam, somewhere just within the city itself. Freshly raging, no less. The terrain itself seemed unstable, and I didn't stay long. Fast travel tether, a quick-use portal that consumed itself when I was finished, and then I got back to New York to finalize things. As I told Coulson then, it seemed wiser to keep the book in this realm and world, and in relative proximity to its orderly partner. Also, I thought that knowing less about what I've done and where precisely I dropped it might keep _me_ from being tempted back to collect it. It fell into the fiery dark, and I was done. That part worked out, at least. I have zero love nor lure in me to draw near to this damned thing again."

He slumped in the driver's seat, making the shoulders of his sleek black suit wrinkle. After a moment, his voice turned sardonic. "I think we've established by now I don't exactly strive to make my own future more difficult than it has to be." She saw his head tilt. "And yet, here we are. Again." He turned to look at her as the van came to a stop at a light. " _Does_ this planet owe that endless eldritch black some money?"

"What?"

"Running joke, pardon." Loki sighed and put the car back into drive as the light switched to new green. "Coulson and I are getting a wee bit sick of this particular awful trend in our lives."

She stared at him, putting together more facts. "Is that part of why Phil said I was still stuck with this job until further notice?"

"Mm." The corner of his lip quirked upward, showing a glint of unhappy fang. "Wager you wish you'd gotten the Norway hoax with me instead."

May considered that, looking ahead at a tangle of Pennsylvania pine trees that loomed tight in the dark. They would arrive at the county line at dawn, and a job was a job. She was there to get it done, and she tossed up a short shrug for emphasis. "Well. For what it's worth, I hate Norway."

. . .

May slammed the door of the van shut with the flat of her hand, looking at the chalky smears of black along the fronts of a number of broken houses. She lifted her head to assess their surroundings with the rest of her senses next, frowning at the silence in the air and an almost palpable aura of fear left behind by the ruins. Still no signs of life, here at the fringes of the town itself. They'd had to offroad the vehicle just to get this far, snaking around and through more than one knot of rotted trees - some of which Loki had crawled out of the van to tear out of their way with a flick of his hand and, more than once, a good, old-fashioned, hearty quasi-Asgardian kick. Natural blockades, made in unnatural ways. She kept an eye on him as he worked, listening to the otherwise empty woods for more mortal threats and coming up empty.

This was the northernmost fringe of Ashland, where county lines began to blur and the roads north were blocked not by nature, but by the old signs warning people away from the abandoned terrain ahead. "You sensing anything?"

"I'm not," said Loki, watching the empty houses with a wary look etched under his brow. "Nothing. A dead parcel of land." He swiveled his head, craning for a view around a few piles of wood. "And some attempts to use their own wreckage as defense against _something._ " He looked down at her, next. "But no bodies. No note of such rot in the air."

She crossed her arms against herself, comforting leather always under her fingertips. It was still too hot for the jacket, another October day that felt more like early August, but that was her style. "As much as I always hate to admit it, this is your turf. What are you thinking?"

Loki shook his head. "It's a puzzle. Set the likelihoods and my fears aside - I placed that book whence I did to be _damned_ sure no one could approach it lightly. The ways north are fully abandoned, and I understand no stragglers wander there overmuch."

"There's tourism. People love ghost towns."

"I don't think anyone's rappelling down hellfire holes for giggles and some hundred bucks for the equipment rental fees. The fumes alone would kill a human outright." He arched an eyebrow, finding some grim humor. "Though, again, your species is oft madder than even I with all my experience can expect of you. Say then I can't exclude the possibility entirely, but I feel strongly that it's unlikely."

She snorted. "Okay, so? It can't just levitate itself out of the hole and get up to business?"

"Not normally, from what I have been given to understand. It must feed on something or someone in order to exact its influence. This much I know by bitter experience and Strange's word both." He looked ruefully at her, then buried the expression by taking long strides closer to the homes for a better look and to see what lay beyond. "After all, I did say at the time I found it resting amongst a pool of blood. What I did not say then, nor perhaps wanted to say, was that this was almost certainly not mere decor, but rather a regular offering to keep it sated and still until that Vernei took it back to hand for his master's work beyond. Or, you know, until some daft idiot got a bright idea in his head."

The next came in a black mutter under his breath: "Oops."

"And fire is never going to be a good snack for a book of any type, even magically semi-alive ones." She did her part, circling quickly back behind the house to look for the tracks of the departed, but keeping him in listening range. Nothing. She came up around the front again, finding him on the porch. She stepped up, hand on her weapon, ready to back him up on instinct.

"I was thinking of starving it out, really… I would have thought it might not dream, but at least be of lower power than before. Defeat wearied it. Let it stay so for some time. And if I may confide? I was hoping for a few more millennia, not a scant couple of years. Get me good and dead before it got wily again. Be someone else's problem next time." He shrugged before shoving a door out of his way to look within. His nostrils wrinkled at the acrid smell inside and he ducked back out quickly, looking at the painted sigil above the door, bemused.

He reached up to knock at it with his knuckle. A once white circle, and within it was a cheerily geometric painted bluebird. It fluttered in a frozen moment atop a page of music. All of it lay underneath a smudge of black. It looked like a piece of quilt. Pretty thing. "I read about those. Hex signs. Folk traditions to bless those that live within." The laugh that followed was dry. "Didn't do much good here. Faint trace of something corrupted inside. Nothing here now - and perhaps not by day - but yes. They found something not kind to life attacking them, and quite reasonably, they fled. But to where?"

May looked around. He didn't seem on alert in any dangerous regard yet, so her posture stayed relaxed. She stepped back off the porch and moved to the back of the van, getting another vantage and a peek at the local horizon. Full sweep. Best she could do to help.

Loki dropped off the cracking porch with catlike grace, looking across the ground for those things only he could see and finding little save traces of ordinarily spent energy and the heat track of their own vehicle. "Simply doesn't make sense. It would not have activated so easily, and with such violence implicit in its assertion of itself. Not without a catalyst, or some given new power source. Almost doesn't seem possible. Maybe it _is_ a coincidence, and while terrible circumstances are obviously still here to be found, my worst fears can yet sleep."

She holstered her weapon at the sudden wisp of motion visible just over the treeline. Her eyes focused in as she made sure of what she was seeing. Yes. Definitely worth investigating. "Loki."

"Or, to keep that book in mind… Maybe some mitigating factor is active, something we haven't seen yet…"

" _Agent_."

That coolly snapped, authoritarian tone she specialized in got his face up to look at her, finding the back of her head. Then he looked over the crown of her hair, seeing what she saw and calculating it out plainly. A plume of dark grey smoke, barely visible beyond a distant stand of trees. Northern and western edge of town. The map they'd had said there were more homes out that way, a deep rural neighborhood that almost looked like its own tiny knot of a village exiled from the rest. A still-smoldering house, then. Something almost fresh. "Well. _That's_ interesting," he said, deceptively mild.

"Think the road will get us close?"

"Worst of the barricades seems to be at the town borders, not within. You drive, I'll manage debris just in case." He dug in his pocket and then tossed the keys over her shoulder, not bothering to wait and watch as she snapped them out of the air in a single gesture. "Are we having fun yet?"

"I'll have fun on the drive home."

Loki's snort of agreeable amusement was cut off as he slammed himself back inside the van.


	3. Purge

3\. Purge

. . .

Loki grabbed at the dashboard. "Stop the car. Now!"

Reflex took over and May hit the brakes with neat abruptness, throwing them both forward a few inches. It wasn't until after she assessed the situation in front of the vehicle that she looked at him for an answer on what the hell he'd reacted to. She didn't see a damn thing - just a dirt side road they were taking to avoid another blowdown, with the smoking neighborhood just around the corner. Before she could get the verbal form of the question out, he'd slid out of the passenger's seat and was already stalking towards something on the ground that she couldn't make out. She put the van in park and got ready to follow him, but paused when a man with a shotgun stepped out of the trees about a hundred yards ahead.

Loki didn't appear to notice the new arrival. She got out anyway and began to walk towards him, keeping her eyes on the man that was watching them just as intently. Loki put up a hand to stop her, still studying the ground. "Don't," he said, low.

She frowned. Closer now, she took a fast glance and saw a thin white line crossing the dirt, some of it already buried under grass. She looked away for a second and found the line curving sharply around the edge of a house visible not far from where the man was. The other side went through the trees. Unbroken. "What is it?"

"Salt."

She wrinkled her brow, looking again at the man at the edge of the trees. A burly figure in a dirty denim shirt and greying beard, he stepped forward a few paces to make his own position clearer. The muzzle of the shotgun stayed low, for what that was worth, and with open, unthreatening care, she smoothly tugged a wallet out of her pocket to flash the fake badge at him. Her own gun was still in easy reach. Not an icer, not for a job like this, but it was the option of last resort anyway. "State investigation. We're here to help."

"Don't mess with the line." The man sounded almost grudging with every word. "Don't got an opinion about what's going on otherwise, but it's keeping us safe in here. Night's been the worst. You mess with that line, lady, you ain't here to help even if you think you are."

Loki straightened up, looking at the man with open, sharp curiosity. "What _has_ been going on in there?"

The good old boy studied him in his fine black suit, making some sort of silent but obviously negative judgment, then chose to answer him anyway. He tossed an awkward nod back over his left shoulder, both hands still on his weapon. "Thing's been a lifesaver, but can't vouch for the woman that put it there. I don't have an opinion, ain't right for me before God, regardless of what that old biddy says. But _they_ sure do. Go ask them if you want to know it. I won't talk about the night, you get someone else to yammer that in your ear. Go back a quarter of a mile, the old burned down house. Most of 'em are still there, wringing their hands." The grudging tone got even more dour. "You can't miss it. And mind the god-damned line."

May looked at Loki as she repocketed her badge. He straightened up, off in his own world for a moment. The man was no longer of any interest to him. The line still was. He looked almost intrigued. "Step where I step, and cross where I choose. Don't scuff your heel as you go."

"Doesn't exactly seem difficult."

"Be cautious, regardless. We'll leave the van here for now. I expect it'll be safe enough this close and by day." Rare seriousness from the alien. Magic, then. Some kind, anyway.

The man drew back to the tree line once she'd crossed just as Loki guided. Maybe it was because she expected something to happen, but there was almost a prickle in the air against her skin as she crossed. But that was all. Nothing flashy, and the boundary survived their passing intact.

Loki stayed by the line of salt, still bemused, while she nodded her professional gratitude to the older man. He grunted, half-amiably, and disappeared back into the shadows. When he was gone, she let Loki lead the way through the trees towards their target.

. . .

The bemused look seemed like it was going to be a permanent fixture on Loki's face for the day, now gaining a fresh addition in an archly raised eyebrow as the pair watched a woman with a tight bun of grey hair where she knelt statue-silent upon a lawn flecked with fresh hot ash. Her hands were raised to the sky, and her lips twitched now and again. Behind her stood a handful of more locals, each with tight, nervous expressions as they looked at the new arrivals. A couple more sat at the edge of the street, looking grumpier. The rest were still hidden inside intact houses, it seemed. Among the ones on the road, by the dirt and grime, were some refugees from the other side of the white line, where other houses hadn't fared as well.

The burned house itself was a complete loss; a handful of load bearing wood and concrete pillars poking up from the wooden ruins of a compact lot. By the sinkage of some of the rubble, it was clear there was a basement somewhere in there. The back of the house had slid partially down the edge of a hill, revealing the metal shape of a now-abandoned car. Loki slowly turned his face from the odd display in front of him and looked at her with a quick glimpse of grinning sardonic displeasure.

May took a breath, ready to play intermediary between some clearly rustled townies and an also clearly rustled alien. She went for the classics - cool, authoritarian power. "I'm Agent Melinda May, this is Agent Brigham Locke. What happened here?"

Many of locals jumped as if goosed, despite the fact that they were looking right at each other. The sitters shifted uncomfortably. Then all looked to the kneeling woman. She fluttered and lowered her hands, then rose up gracefully. She still didn't turn. "The witch was purged," she said, in a clear, carrying voice. "We shalt not suffer her kind to live among us any longer. Into the woods with her, and let God judge."

"Spare me." To his credit, Loki pitched it so low and so fast that she almost missed it. The old woman certainly did. She was going to be riled enough without his sarcasm.

May found her eyebrow going up to match his, however. "She the one that put up the salt-line we saw around this part of town?"

The old woman turned at that, her face pinched and bitter. "I will not be saved by other than God's grace."

"But you're here on this side of it, still." _That_ popped out at full volume, carrying with an unmistakable undertone of hot acid. He followed it up with a disarming smile, clapping his hands together once as he swept a look across the rest of the gathering. Small point in his ledger, a couple people looked chastened. "Can hardly blame you. We're still assessing the damage to the town, but you're clearly having some lasting troubles. We'd like to help." He spread a hand towards anyone other than the old lady. "Who's representing this group?"

Again, the tension and schism in the air. Not defeated, but definitely regathering and assessing his tactics, Loki swung deftly back towards the old woman, voice staying smooth. May swore the acid was still there, but he could hide it damn well when he wanted. "Ah, we do look to faith in these hard times. The local pastor?"

"A woman of the people." She jutted her chin to indicate a place two houses down. "For too long I've been a good neighbor to _her_. The fall of demons upon us is a warning from our Lord that I had no choice but to heed."

"Mm." He smiled and looked down to May, silently passing the baton. He was obviously instantly half-past done with the woman. Fine. Almost couldn't blame him for that one; May had the distinct sense this was the sort of person that would have had almost the same reaction to an Inhuman, a refugee… or the wrong faction of Methodist. Anyone something _other_.

"I'd like to talk with anyone that's willing about what's been going on. We'll be able to mount a full rescue and handle the situation once we have some more information. Don't worry, we've probably heard worse." She ignored the old woman and looked around. "Anyone?"

"We don't understand anything." One of the younger survivors ventured it, not looking at the group on the lawn. "There was the storm, and she walked out of her house and went all around the neighborhood. Nobody thought anything of it, until night came. The mist rose, and there were these awful screams… some of the folks saw things, but." He faltered. "We don't want to talk about that."

"But they didn't come here."

He shook his head with his eyes closed. Loki looked past him at someone else as he moved, a middle-aged woman that dared to lock eyes with him. She glanced left, flashing a pair of fingers. He glanced after, seeing a still-intact home just across the street from the burned one, its address ending in a two. He looked away, pretending to not acknowledge her. All in under a second.

May, who caught it all as well, watched with an internal sigh of relief. Like the Latveria thing, the guy wasn't bad at his weirdly chosen path. The woman slipped out of the crowd after, putting her hand on the shoulder of one of the kids as she passed. "Anything else you can share?" The guy shook his head again, clearly not willing to risk more ire from the old woman. "Okay. Can I ask how you're all sure enough this lady was involved with the trouble that you burned her house down?"

The old woman turned and spat the words right at Loki, not May. He looked back with sedate dislike as she sounded almost triumphant. "Because she's a _murderer_."

. . .

They waited until part of the knot of people mostly dispersed, milling around and making studious notes from whatever they were able to glean. Still, only a few were willing to share the barest details of what happened after dark. Most clammed up, trapped in their own mental horror. As the people got used to their presence, Loki casually slid them away and then around the backs of some of the homes until he trailed a clouded - and probably magically veiled, May realized - path to the one that he'd been signaled towards.

The woman inside met them at the back door and let them in with a hurried wave of a hand that still visibly shook in the darkness of the house. She went to her kitchen counter as the pair came in behind her, carefully reaching for the sweaty pitcher of iced tea. They could hear her generator buzzing in the distance. "I'd tell you normally to not mind old Marty, but we're way past that." She sighed as she poured out several glasses with studiously colonial politeness. "And if we can find Aggie after all this, I might tell her to forgive Marty in her heart, but press one _hell_ of a set of charges."

The pitcher went down with a thunk. Loki took a glance around, absorbing a number of happy group pictures and literature of a specific type dotting a handful of irregular shelves high on the walls, along with other joyful knicknacks scattered between them. He chuckled once, droll. "Let me guess. _You're_ the local pastor."

"And I'm doing real well by my flock right now, aren't I? I'm Kelly Sue. When I'm not getting God's love hijacked by angry old women who got more than a little bit of the Old Testament jammed in their craw, I try to remind folks that Aggie's never been anything but sweet to people, and it's not for us to judge anyway." She took a huge swallow off her tea, then thunked that down, too. She put her hands down flat on the fake marble counter and stared at them for a long minute before looking up, apologetic. She pushed the other two glasses towards them. "I'm sorry. I feel like I've just gone through one of those tests of faith I talk about, and I didn't do very well. And it's not me that's getting kicked for it." She looked away, as if still stunned. "I can't believe they actually did it to her."

" _Is_ your missing neighbor a witch?"

Kelly Sue looked at Loki, more than a little visibly puzzled at his choice to go after magic first rather than murder. "Aggie? There were rumors about her family more than her. They're Harkness now, I can't remember what her old family name was. The grandma's name. Probably something Dutch. Because that's the point." She straightened up, gesturing at him. "You ever happen to hear of the cunning folk?"

"Vaguely. Refresh me. Briefly, if you can." He glanced over as May took both a seat and a glass of tea, watching them. A dark grey cat slunk down from a staircase around the corner and made a beeline for her legs, bunting a booted ankle hard enough to wobble it. She looked down at the sleek little thing, amused.

"Even vague, that's a surprise. Cunning folk are, according to tradition, basically anti-witch defense. The things you see around here, that broom I have next to my door that you stepped by without even looking at? She gave that broom to me. She gifted some shoes to people moving in a few years back, horseshoes, herbal kits for the windows. Stuff like that. All just old fancy Dutch traditions once meant to ward off black magic. Godly folklore, the sort of thing I can't feel I need to pick on, because we're talking about 'spells' that come from the Bible itself. Prayers and routine. Local color. She never stepped out naked at night or anything that I ever saw. No creepy old tomes in her house. I'd bring her some of my own coffee, we used to talk. Not always easy for her. She grew some plants and she knew the old traditions because that was her hobby. She's a historian, or was. Not exactly Bewitched reruns here."

Loki arched an eyebrow. "The other bit? What this 'Marty' said?"

Kelly Sue sighed and set her glass down, reaching up to scratch at a reddish-brown eyebrow. "Look… small towns get crummy rumors going and no amount of dirt puts them out sometimes. No matter how hard we try, and let me tell you, I did. Tried to get her to visit the congregation so they could look at her more often. Hard to pick on what you can see plain. But she didn't like that, can't say as I blame her. Anyway, city called her husband's death down as a suicide, and if you look at how she's been after, that's what it was. _I've_ no doubts, anyway. I've got faith. That's not her."

May reached down to give the pawing cat a little scritch behind an ear, unable to resist enjoying the throaty purr she got for her trouble. "Pretty little guy."

Loki watched as Kelly Sue looked upset again. "Gal. She's not mine." She looked at Loki, tense. "Aggie's. I managed to get her out after they set the fire. Poor girl snuck into the garage through the basement, I guess. I had to smash the automatic door to look for her and luckily she made it easy. Popped right out at me, and I'm glad they weren't sitting around back there to watch me do it. Only thing Aggie still really cares about since Nathaniel's death." She made a kissy noise. At the implicit promise of food, the cat popped delicately up, using May's bent knee as a springboard. Like a feather. Kelly rustled in a cupboard for a crinkling kibble bag, willing to give in to make _somebody_ happy. "Her name's Sabrina."

May looked up, her mouth parting in a surprised grin as Loki looked blank, the reference lost on him. "Seriously?"

Kelly Sue shrugged, looking rueful. "Aggie had at least _some_ dry-as-hell sense of humor about things." She looked at Loki, still clearly out of the loop. "You from overseas or something?"

"Essentially." He pressed his palms together, looking at the cat as she pawed at the bits of kibble Kelly Sue was doling out to her. "Two more questions, then. Is there anything you can tell us about what goes on after dark, and which direction do you think your neighbor was driven towards?"

The pastor puffed out a small sigh. "I never used to believe in demons as a physical concept. We're the new breed, the lure of our inner demons and such other temptations and challenges in our everyday lives. But what I heard screaming in the night after that storm? Yeah, call it a whole new perspective. I haven't been outside the line, and the people that have don't talk. But what I hear?" She arched an eyebrow. "I appreciate that you're here to help, but my honest advice is do what you can to mount an evacuation first, and maybe call the Pope second."

Loki smiled, wry and unhappy. "I'm not sure he's equipped with better resources than we, madame, but noted. And the other?"

"North." She pulled her elbows in to fold and drop herself partially atop the counter, smiling once when Sabrina nudged at her forehead with her own. "They weren't going to chase her past the line long as it is, and she knows damn well nobody's going to run her all the way out to the old towns. The way they went after her, that's the best option she had."

"Not the safe choice," said May.

"Doubt she felt she had many others. She knows the terrain a bit better than most, so she won't be at as much risk from the usual problems up there. But she's also been out there a full night, and I told you…" Kelly Sue trailed off, her brow knotting in before she looked up at the pair of agents again. "If you can, please find her. She didn't deserve this. But help the people here, too."


	4. Cabin in the Woods

4\. Cabin in the Woods

. . .

May almost had to jog to keep up with Loki's long stride away from the neighborhood as he led the way back towards the van. He said nothing until they were back over the line, his hand flicking out to show where he intended for them to cross, and when he did, he sounded dour. "Sorry to say, we're not driving out of this fresh taste of hell just yet."

She nodded, expecting that much. "Still barely enough information to call this a scout."

"Yes. And if they leave the line alone, they're safe enough in there for a while yet. The old woman claims faith but I wager when it comes time to test herself to the quick, she'll draw back, afraid. Else that'll be the point the others, such as our warmly welcoming fellow, put a stop to her best they can. They're afraid of _her_ , true, but far more afraid of whatever's out here. Their silence proves that."

She leaned her hip against a headlight and crossed her arms, thinking. Not concerned yet. As long as she'd been with SHIELD, there was always something worse out there that they'd faced and survived. Today wasn't even in the top twenty yet. She just wanted to know if this scenario was going to get there. "And what _is_ out here?"

"I don't know yet, not for certain. It's still a puzzle." Loki wandered to the back of the van, pulling the double doors open. He leaned around the side of it now and again as he still talked, pulling out the packed bags. "But here's the crux of it. We might not know how or if the black book's been given power, if it lays in a new tender's hand. But we _do_ know now that someone is being driven in that direction - someone that _can_ be forced into that awful role. She's good bait for it, this Harkness, just as I was. Either we're already in deep trouble from before our arrival, or we're about to be in it worse if she makes it unhindered to the thing's stirred grave. I think we might be best off hoping for the latter, and thus, still able to do something about it."

May straightened up, turning to look at the pile of gear as she realized what he meant. "I thought the pastor said Harkness was doing anti-witch stuff, not that she was actually a witch."

"She's not wrong, exactly. Her proof bears out, the things around her home. More than she recognizes, actually. I could smell those lost herbs in the guttering fire. Good breeds." He waved that observation off. "Some traditions of the cunning men and women came over from London, hidden deep among the Puritans that later violently cast them out anyway, and less quite so hidden amongst the mainland settlers that straggled in later. Yes, these old Dutch that founded the area. Just as she says. Them and the Germans, who both called such work _hexerei_."

He grinned as her eyebrows raised, delighted in a chance to show off. "The Amish, naturally, rebelled against such more -to me- innocent syncretism built to withstand the supposed witch folk. The _braucherei_ lore, to be precise. An unusual folk mix of old lore and newer faith that had been a mainstay for centuries. Not even the colorful signs we see here go further east into their territory."

She kept her eyebrows raised at him until he allowed a laugh. "Yes, I confess. I lied to her. Thousand years old. Sorcerer. I knew what you people were smudging up in little wooden bowls for tricks when I was a boy, and we have a few scant tomes on the times before those old shamans that I used to read for laughs. I wanted to know what she knew." He slammed the van's doors shut, looking up with a little fresh dismay when no birds fluttered out from the trees in offense. "Never a good sign, that."

"All right. Folklore is an actual thing, but you're still looking at the witch angle with this situation."

He jammed his thumb towards the white line. "That's not mere folksy wisdom, Miss May. That's the work itself, simple ritual at the hand of someone that needed it. Now, salt is an almost universal purifier, tied close to the concept on a metalogical, parapsychological level on more worlds than I can briefly name, _because_ it's so simple to use. Any species that has access to it has used it to scrub a floor at some point in their history, and thus its symbologic power grows. Say your world and mine and many more, in story and faith both. This simple chemical can make for a strong and simple barricade. Like this one." He spread his hands. "She has some talent for the art itself. The salt's active wall proves it."

"But you had to learn how to do magic, I thought. Didn't sound like that's happened here."

"Do we want to stand here all afternoon and dither about the real world of magical study?" He studied her expression when she didn't say anything. "My gods, you almost _do_." He shook his head. "Fine - Almost anyone, given time, can learn the nuts and bolts of magic. Because it's much more difficult this way, shortcuts exist, and those shortcuts are… unpleasant." He pointed towards the north woods. "Cue the abbreviated history of black books and other dangerous bargains. At the same time, there are people who have, for lack of a better phrase, some innate talent. This is a broad statement. Sometimes it's genetic, sometimes it's cultural and shapes the willing mind. There are other possible factors." He exhaled. "I have talent and training both. This woman, Aggie? Perhaps she was trained by her recent ancestors, perhaps what gift she holds is purely instinctual and she's never done more before this week besides make a terrific basil pesto. Either way, this leaves her mind at open risk to the book's influence, should she get too close to it."

May waited to see if he was done, hating to admit she _had_ been pretty interested in his weirdly scholastic rant.

In fact, he wasn't quite finished. Loki followed it all up with a short inhale and a pointed finale. "And regardless, some random hedge witch? It makes for a nice shift from over-indulged arrogant sots with fancy robes."

Oh, she wasn't passing _that_ up. She smirked at him. "Is that a dig at Strange, or more self-depre-"

"Strange, _obviously_." He snorted to cap his interruption, making a good play at looking insulted. He rapped his knuckles on the back of the van. "So, the other bad news you already know."

May unfolded her arms and walked towards the gear pile, bending to pick out what she would carry. Leave him the heaviest one, the satphone, and the bag of his own emergency magic supplies. "We can't get the van much deeper into the woods. Too overgrown, and probably unfriendly. Less noise on foot, too." She tugged a pair of thick nylon straps over her shoulder, squaring them up to distribute the weight evenly before digging into her pocket. "Got a map saved on my phone. First thing I care about after trying to get tracks on Harkness is making sure we can bunker down safely at night. We have to pace for that. How much time do you need to reinforce a place before sundown?"

"Not much, if it's an actual shelter. If we're in the open woods, it's doable in a hurry but vastly hairier and I make no guarantees about the pleasantry of the scenery. Also, my guarantees necessarily weaken as we encroach on the thing's influence. I unfortunately have some limits when it comes to the borders of unceasing horrible chaos." He lifted the heavier cargo with ease, letting her take the lead on a rural approach to the northern end of the village again. Between the two of them, it wouldn't be difficult to find a woman's trail. One way or another. "I do have one piece of good news, if you'd care to hear it."

She tilted her head, amused at the lilt in his voice. "What is it?"

"Demons, unlike ghosts, are more often solid-state. If we're facing something from that category in these woods in the times to come, you technically _can_ still roundhouse kick them in the face."

May had to huff a laugh, looking back over her shoulder at him. "Technically. Will that do much?"

"If you're careful. Slows them down a bit, in my experience. Highly satisfying, too."

"I'll take it."

. . .

May looked up from the environment tracker on her phone to see Loki pacing around the perimeter of a small but sturdy park ranger's shed that had been abandoned at some point in the last decade. Enough room to shelter in place comfortably, although a two room would have been even better. She liked her privacy. Still, though. At least they hadn't had to bivouac in the woods. Byrnesville, a small, equally abandoned town just south of Centralia itself, was still a hard trek up the broken road. The storm had done a severe amount of damage, and by Loki's expressions as they'd traveled, she had a bitter suspicion some of the downfall blocking their way was even newer than that. "Twenty more minutes to sundown. You almost done there?"

"With plenty of time to spare." He pulled away from the dirty window, where he'd been, in his own words, 'air-engraving protection runes along the sublimated etheric structure above the glass itself, while tapping into the local ley network for additional reinforcement.' All right, whatever. Almost as bad as Fitz's technobabble. No wonder the two got along. Loki turned to look at her. "Taking one more quick look at the road?"

"I don't like that we're not catching tracks." Six hours of a hard hike, with frequent breaks in between. Nothing. Not even squirrels, much less shoeprints.

"You're not going to. Something's cleared the road of her and made damn sure we're kept well behind. I don't think we can find anything this close to night. Perhaps the morning will clear some of the more metaphysical debris away again." He arched a black eyebrow at her. "My advice is go inside and see if anything feels off to you as the sun comes down. If it does, then I need to reinforce something, quickly." He shrugged, looking at the open door of the shed with a more rueful expression. "And apparently fix the camp stove."

"You're more patient than I am with that. If it were up to me, I'd just set up a fire outside. Easier." Silently, she conceded his other point. She swept inside past him to look over the contents of the shed. A few new lights, and most of the webs already waved away from the stove. Good enough to get some of the food packs warmed up, once the gas connection was fixed.

"Your average hellspawn doesn't go for canned noodle soups and marshmallows, I'm afraid. They would take grand offense to your campfire." She sensed him breeze by, heading for the knot of old connections behind the stove. He scuffed something out of his way, and she couldn't help an entirely human grimace at the sight of the enormous spider he'd interrupted and sent on its way. She caught his look. "Do I need to toss an anti-arachnid veil up, too?"

Tempting, but not necessary. She shrugged at him and shut the door behind her. "Save the energy." She thought. "Although if they get bigger than that one…"

"Fireball works just as well, and more energy efficient in the short term."

 _Almost_ worth a chuckle. She went around the inside of the shed while he tinkered, stopping at a dirty, thick-glass window that looked westward. The sun was a deep, haunting orange as it seemed to lurk its way towards a horizon jagged to pieces by uneven treetops. The murk of the window made it look still-veiled by a grey storm. She frowned at it, then looked up at the old curtain pinned into place. She wrinkled her nose and tugged it down anyway, blinking away the old, built up dust as it puffed down around her.

"Window south doesn't have a curtain on it. Could put on a board or two, there's some over next to the door I can attach."

May looked at him, inclining her head politely at the offer. "No need. Just prefer it to be nice and dark when I sleep. Isn't a necessity. I think we've done enough."

He didn't say anything to that, but a moment later he banged the front of the stove with a relatively underpowered kick. "There. One burner works. I wouldn't try the rest of the options, and I wouldn't run the damned thing long."

. . .

Food, as suggested, took almost no time to prepare. Loki ate little. He kept watching the half-rotted curtains, unusually tense. It was the book, of course. He was going to stay on edge until they'd done what they could and got out. May sensed nothing, so she said nothing. Until proven otherwise, she was content with his proven competence at keeping the shelter itself safe. She ate, and considered how best to maintain her calm state of mind to get the optimal amount of sleep.

Night fell, full and black. With the curtains down, there wasn't a normal way to tell for certain. What there was was an almost amorphic shift in the air, a palpable thing carried invisibly through the top layer of her skin, setting it to crawling. May set down the pack she had been re-sorting, straightening up and knowing immediately that Loki had gone into a kind of blackly focused, almost furious trance where he sat crosslegged on a coiled rug. She wanted to ask him if they were still safe inside, but if they weren't, he was busy working on it, and if they were, then there was no point in drawing him out of his silence.

May watched him, not staring, maintaining that even zen balance in her mind. Fear was a tool of her instincts and not the driver, so she allowed her skin to crawl, but she did not tremble otherwise. A moment later, she did something similar as him - taking a comfortable, crosslegged position, and holding her mind in silence.

She did not jump when the scream came crawling out of the night; a thin, reedy wail that sliced its way through the metal and wood walls of the old park shed, but she did open her eyes to fix on that western window and its dirty veil. It had no words in it, nothing to suggest a human voice.

The next sounds reached through the southern window. The one without a curtain covering. A tiny scrape, like a fingernail's trace across rusted steel and dried bone. A small sound, with implicit violence and hunger. The bone was theirs. The rusted steel its fangs.

"Don't look," Loki whispered. His eyes were closed, and the skin between his brows was pinched tight. It was obvious he didn't need to, to know what was there. It told her enough about the shape of the thing just outside.

She didn't look, choosing to remain mild and even when the sounds eased. "Think I should have taken you up on that offer to put up some wood."

"Maybeso," he said. He still didn't open his eyes. She got the distinct feeling this was the closest he was going to get to sleep that night. Good thing he was an alien. "Just maybe."

The scream came again, deeper and throatier and warped somehow. She heard a rattle in it, unable to keep from imagining some sort of thing with a hollowed out chest and a twisted spine. Her skin tried to crawl again, her fingers twitching once, unnerved. Demons. So she said it again, out loud, pacing it like a mantra. "Just demons. Outside. And we're inside."

His brow tightened, then smoothed again. " _Just_. Not my first nighttime assault, fortunately." His eyes opened, sharp and bright. Magic at work, she could tell by the concentration there. He still didn't look at the window. She thought she could hear _it_ breathe. "They can't get in. So they'll try for an open mind, to make the prey afraid enough to run."

"Wrong house for that," said May. She tilted her head slightly, still calm.

"Not troubled?"

A tiny, humorless smile cracked the corner of her mouth. "Can't get in. Why worry? I'll save my energy for when I do have to kick one in the face."

He studied her. "I'm almost sorry we don't have more _wacky_ little adventures like this one."

"In full honesty, I'm not wild about this one right now. I'm not scared, but it doesn't mean it's a theme park ride, either." She folded her hands together. "I have a question."

He waited for it, that single arch of his brow saying he was ready for it.

"What _is_ the book, really?" She hadn't said the Darkhold's name since getting on the road, because _he_ hadn't. According to him, such things often had power. And something about the Darkhold's own name seemed doubly a danger. "Where did it first come from? I know you and Strange talk in between the way you guys grouse at each other, did he tell you anything that might help us here?"

His face tight, Loki closed his eyes again in a denial. It smoothed over a moment later to prove out that he had not meant it as an insult. His expression held a safeguard. "That is _not_ a tale you should want to hear and not one _I_ will tell. But yes. I know a few things now I did not know then. We'll see if they have use."

"Anything good for tonight?"

His expression softened into something wry. "It's going to get worse out there. My earnest advice? Pack your eardrums and think of Norway."


	5. In the Beginning

5\. In the Beginning

. . .

Doctor Strange knelt in the perfect center of his magic circle, his hands raised in yogic concentration as his gloved fingers twisted their ways through the rituals that called for consciousness to be raised and for power to be collected. His mind traveled the past, his awakened third eye looked to the future, guarded by the Vishanti Gods that held him in their esteem. Beyond the circle was the room, a geometric space that existed in no less than nineteen individual dimensions and held an echo of itself in the Between, the void-of-worlds that often held black gods and blacker fates. Beyond that room was his home, and his staff, and his collections of mystery and secrets that are often not safe for mortal eyes.

This is the Sanctum Sanctorum, the silent and majestic house set back from the Bleecker Street pavements and buried amidst trees and the sounds of bustling bohemian life. It is the current home of the Book of the Vishanti, a tome of ordered magic whose dark mirror stirs awake not far away in Pennsylvania's lost woods. The sorcerer supreme has consulted with this great work and listened for the whispers of his Gods, and all of them tell little but what he's already known.

The Darkhold stirs. It seeks a user. It seeks again to be free, to bring Chthon's veiling muck of chaos across the world entire again, as it was made to do. What he cannot see is what it sees, so what he looks at is how it was once created.

Doctor Strange looks into the abyss, and as it does, it looks back into and through him, reading pages from the hell-book like nursery rhymes, its riddles sung in broken tongues. He is prepared for it, because he has to be. But the dark speech echoes in the depths of his mind, like cancer.

The pages sung out to the sorcerer is the story Loki does not tell Agent Melinda May as they wait for night to pass in a fortified shelter, not because he has no faith in her mental fortitude, but because there are things that should not be spoken in still air when demons sit at the door and might listen to the fairy tales of their own birth.

The Darkhold was _born_ , not only made.

This is how.

. . .

In the beginning was the darkness, and it was eternal. Into this void emerged seven pure elements of a great and infinite power, and in the microcosm flash of their conjoined will, they birthed a universe still cold and black and empty. The seven fell away into the void, and between them came the first microbes. The first glimmers of life, spreading themselves out like a spiral virus. Billions of galaxies rose from this base replication, stringy and forever distant as the rapid burst of the new universe pulled them away from each other.

But in these first half-made places, life was not yet complete, and so things came to pass that did not have names, did not have power, did not have sentience. Light existed but was rare, and like the darkness, did not itself have power or patron yet.

The void that was now a universe grew and aged and worlds rose and fell in a cosmic blink of a cosmic eye, and someday, some black day within the dark places of these shadowed first worlds, a Thing that did not have a name awoke and understood It _should_ have a name.

It looked about itself in the darkness that was its womb, and understood that darkness came first. Elder child, elder thing. The primordial birth; the pool of creation that was Itself. It understood this concept in a way that contained Its own reality and Its power over it, and It looked at the world beneath its feet and it _understood_.

The first word to emerge from this primordial underworld was a name, and so names became the first great method of power, bound to Its hand alone. It stood on black earth and looked into a black sky, alone, and screamed Itself out to form the underworld of a new and hardened reality itself. This was Its name, and the root of Its power.

 _Chthon._

The word thrummed throughout creation, guttural and sharp, and now a Thing became a God.

Chthon lowered his fetid hands to regard them and understood what he had made. What it meant. He had given himself an identity, which granted him new and extraordinary power where none had existed before, but such things were also a weakness. Because he was born to darkness, the roots of this new self buried deep in funereal dirt where worlds died and things like him were born, light itself must be shaped to the edge of his newly named shadow.

He looked to the sky and understood that what came to the world that he stood upon was a _dawn,_ and because the universe had been born to make a balance between those seven stones and the dark and the light between them, the dawn was his enemy. He mouthed the word, and then he fled below to wait for his time to pass across the surface again.

There were other things living on the skin of this small world where he had found himself. When darkness wrapped him close again, he slunk near to the beasts and knew this new word for the thing he felt was 'hunger.' He named the small things as he ate them, not to give them power, but to take power away and make it his own. Thus, they fed him more strongly as he hid from scalding light. But this was fleeting strength, and when he was done, only strings of meat dangled from his clawed fingers. The names faded into nothing, lost.

In the second night of his naming, Chthon took more care when feeding, and he flayed out the fresh surface of the beasts to consider this new material. He looked down at the quivering mass of the thing he had eaten, and he spread out the bloody skin again, and with the sharp tip of his finger, he scrawled the name of the dead thing upon it.

As if haunted, all other things of that shape, that specific genetic line, looked up at the night sky. They knew themselves, knew they were prey to what lurked in the dark, and they scuttled away to huddle together for protection, afraid.

Chthon was now more than a Name, for he understood his power in a new and greater way. He was the Namer in the Dark, and he collected what names he made on the flesh-pages to record his knowledge in a manner that he could keep close. With each dawn, he retreated below and whispered these names to himself. In this way, he stayed strong even when he could not feed, for the things he had named all learned to run from the God that hungered in the darkness.

This was millennia, the cycle of life and death, as Chthon's hunger began to grow beyond easy satiation. He cultivated some lives and others he ignored or destroyed. In time he understood he was no longer the only power to live in the dark, and so he spent centuries at war until he would divine the name of the thing he struggled against. And they, defeated, would then go into his pages of flesh and word and name, stacked high as time stretched and dried them. They could never rise against him again. They could only obey at his whim.

The collection of pages grew; born from blood, stinking of death.

As life in the universe became more complex, so they might survive between the light in the dark, it often took more than name alone to tame the new breeds. These new tools became the first spells, and Chthon knew full well this was not a thing he invented alone. But his were spells born of the Dark that was his home, and they too stunk of blood and death and chaos with every syllable.

In time he chose a home once he understood he could not be contained in one place alone, a small blue world where a new creature called _humans_ crawled from the dark of their own evolution and into the dappled light of the woods. He liked to watch them. There were eras in which other interlopers came to toy with these small creatures, and he did not care what inhuman art was made of them. He slept and ate and watched them rise and fall.

It was during the first years of the first great empire, an atlantean city of wonders touched by other mortal gods where he reached out and took his first worshippers, for he had come to understand this was another way to collect power.

As he taught them, they gathered in the dark and called his name. Chthon, low and heady, carried in the wind of the roiling sea. Over and over. Blood sacrifice, staining the waters of the harbor as only the moon watched in silent silver horror. _Chthon_ , they cried, and to these first fleeting servants he gave the first words he would share. They wrote them on new vellum and spirited them away within the fine robes of the first black mages. The vellum did not have a name itself, not yet. They were only his granted Words, and his Spells, an echo of his own bloody copies. Sacred relics, nonetheless.

Three nights later, as the moon turned away from the corruption they had made and became full black, Atlantis tumbled under the surface of the sea. Taken from the light and cast down into the pit that was his domain, and Chthon gloried to see their faces as they bloated in death before him. Darkness had come again, and it was good.

. . .

The next great era to tease a word from him was almost as ancient to modern minds; a barbaric culture sprung up from the seeds of those old vellums that had survived the disaster of Atlantis, and from those words, whispered into another black night, new worshippers came. Creatures that hungered as he had hungered, humans that had no use for the name 'human' and wanted to be _more_. So he took them close to the hollowed shell that passed for his torso, he loved them, and he rebuilt them, flesh torn from bone and blood become something _other,_ and these new acolytes of his name were the first to live in night alone and to avoid the dawn as he must.

 _Vampire_ was the name he gave these new servants, and vile, beautifully malicious Vernei earned back his own singular name even as the others were often hunted by day. Good, sweet, loyal Vernei, who served Chthon faithfully through the next six great eras. It was Vernei who whispered back into the sacred dark and risked the remnants of his soul to suggest a way to share more of Chthon's power, and in so doing also leave a trap for the unwary that would feed both it and the God.

Chthon listened, and blessed this loyal vampire with writing pain for a century for his suggestion. Vernei burrowed under ground, screaming his name in joy for all of it. He thanked his God for his acceptance, and in the gasps of breath that laid between all his moments of agony, he thought of how best to accomplish what he had in mind.

. . .

It took five thousand years for the birthing to be complete. In the first year, in the minute after the first sunset, Vernei knelt before the black altar that held his own tormented blood in offering, and he sliced apart a white goat with his fingernails to bless the great work to come. He could not do it alone. Tamed demi-demons spread throughout the universe and collected the skin of rare beasts, children of light and forgotten things and brought them to the hidden villages to be cured into the rest of the pages that would comprise the unholy book. A few, the most potent, would be Chthon's own collected treasures. Many of the others, sacred copies.

For the cover itself, hunters rode out only at night, as Chthon whispered his delighted guidance into their ears. He gave them the secret name of his last enemy, a typhon-beast of a God, a demogorge who had defied him and attempted to steal a word. They at last found the demogorge at the edge of an abyss where it meant to crawl and hide, and they pinned it down with spears stained with the blood of once-blessed things of light that had died in agony, and they rent from it skin so drenched with the red of its blood that it became blacker than black.

As they knelt over their work in the darkest hour before dawn, Chthon passed over them and took back the Word that had been stolen from him. He pressed it into the flesh of one of the hunters as a blessing for work done well, and that hunter flung himself into the abyss in final ecstasy as the rest cheered his passage. The black skin that would become the cover of the great work was hidden away in a pool of blood six hundred feet underground so that it could cure into useable leather close to the hateful love of Chthon himself.

This was the first thousand years.

The next four thousand were the sacrifices that allowed them to shape the Words their God gave them into the surface of thin vellum so raw veins still seemed to run through every stretched page and not go mad. They wished for his madness, it is true, but they first had to pour themselves into his great work. They must bait the trap and shape the new thing. So they did, and in time each died in horrendous ecstasy, their work done well and their own flesh torn free to be added to the slowly growing book. This was their reward, and they were glad for it.

Five thousand years. New gods rose to claim the names of old. Darkness and light remain trapped against one another. And there, a few scant hundred years after a prophet and child of light was sacrificed by the fearful for the birth of his new faith, Vernei watched as the small village priest huddled in his home. The human screamed hymns in both Latin and in French as Chthon's cultists sanctified the little mephisto's font with vials of hellish blood so old they were thick and brown. They took the holy water they wrested from the man inside, and in their grip it gleamed a new ruby that had nothing to do with its once sacred transmutation. This was an awful thing, done with words and deeds that do not have words, for even Chthon did not name them to give them shape. These were secrets made for starless nights alone.

There in the dark, for three nights, did they feverishly struggle to complete the midwife process. As unlucky travelers were culled from the road to feed the pages as they screamed their way into shape, cultists pressed and cultists died as the vellum pages were tamed and strapped together into thinner pamphlets. Secret words made secret angles, and it was Vernei, his hands torn apart and bleeding, who knelt and oversaw as the final sacrifices used shards of their own shattered fingerbones in the process of lashing the black cover to the squealing pages.

Atop a hill, for a second, a thing in yellow blinked in and out of existence. It had always been there. It never was. The yellow Keeper was lost to nonexistence and the rise of change, but the cult of Chthon paid it no heed.

Vernei laid his scarred palms atop the unmarked cover of the book and knelt his head as his God drew close. Chthon then knelt over him, wrapping him in that brilliant gleaming darkness, and he dipped his claw into the viscous blood, and he wrote the Name upon its cover with intent so pure that the red began to gleam as if this were its heartbeat. It sighed as if truly alive, and Chthon loved it, for the book knew to love him best alone.

The Darkhold. A simple name, but a true one. All the words of the Dark itself he had made were held tight within its rustling pages, secrets and signs of all the sacrifices poured into its spine. The spells of Chaos were scarred deep into it, and each ritual held the echo'd screams of the demogorge whose flesh made the cover.

It was given to Vernei to keep safe, and he fed it well on centuries of more blood. For this, he knew he was loved by his insane God, until the day he fell into a pit in pursuit of the thief named Loki.

. . .

Doctor Strange closed his third eye with a whispered ritual of purity, disturbed.

Where the two SHIELD agents rested through the night, in those woods radiating out from ruined Centralia, there was only silence so deep it was a black pit of the exact type that held that old beast, Chthon. For Loki's pride he had not gone along, as he believed the young new God when he said he would only scout and be well-prepared. But still, Strange knew to be afraid for him anyway.

In the sanctified stillness of his home, with the whispers of the past shredding away before the power of that order he served, he spoke the names of his three Gods and looked to them for comfort until he would hear whether or not his fear was justified. He would sit with them and their wild and powerful auras for comfort, until dawn chased away the old ghosts of Chaos.

In the morning there would be Light. The balance would be restored for him.

But in Pennsylvania, where the old evil no longer lay still… he stirred in his trance, the deep color of worry filling his dreamstate aura like smoke.


	6. Cabin Fever

6\. Cabin Fever

. . .

Melinda May, alert and aware and on point after two hours of an early morning catnap when the hideously screaming things outside gave up at the first light of dawn, was not ever going to be anyone's dummy. It was going to be Loki that went out the door of the ranger's shelter first, just in case, and she would be right behind him with the SHIELD issue shotgun she'd silently unpacked from the gear bags. Along with a couple packs of granola bars for a fast breakfast.

One look at Loki said he'd gotten about as much sleep as she had, and was about as neatly on edge. He didn't take another 'mundane' weapon from the small stockpile she'd insisted they bring, he didn't need one. In the soft gleam of the morning coming in through a window stained with some unnatural ooze, she saw his hands glowing a soft greenish-white. "Of course there's nothing out there now," he said, just a normal mage in the morning, making utterly normal conversation without a care in the world. "Not a single lick of trouble awaiting us outside."

"Sure," she said agreeably, leaving the bags by the door so she could have both hands on the shotty on the first sweep. Buckshot. High impact, short range. If it was mortal, it was paste. If it was demonic, it was still going to have a hell of a bad few seconds while Loki hit it with the followup.

"No problem."

"None whatsoever."

He tensed up like a wild thing, she kicked open the door and then stepped behind him far enough to give her a clear shot and plenty of cover. Sunlight poured in and the motion of the thankfully sturdy door whipped up a cloud of dust particles, and there was nothing else. She lowered the business end of the shotgun and stuck her head out for a fast visual sweep. "Already kinda hot out," she said, deadly calm and mild.

"So it is." She could sense him relax, the electrical aura of whatever enormous elemental assault he had ready just in case draining away. "Did I ever happen to bring up the story of the _first_ time I was bivouacked in the field with a mess of hostile demonic foes just outside the sanctified ring?"

"You've been kind of busy." She slung the shotgun over her shoulder and bent for her daily share of the bags. As the sounds worsened in the night, she watched him become ever more tense and alert, all his senses focused on making damn sure their defenses stayed up. After midnight, the sounds outside took on a disturbingly organic tone, wet slurps and chewing noises and what she suspected was the amplified rattle of cracking bone. Along with the continuing screams. Disgusting enough that her stomach had rolled over when she saw the packs of beef jerky in with the granola bars. It was going to be a vegetarian kind of day.

"I wasn't the primary sorcerer that time, of course. Far too young. I was acting as assistant to an old friend of the Queen's, making our way carefully across a portion of fire-blasted Muspelheim to position ourselves against an incursion we had been just recently warned of. We lost four Asgardian warriors the first night because they were stupid and prideful and they crossed the defensive ring spoiling for a hands-on fight despite all our cautions. We didn't have that problem again. Have you ever seen demons eat a man?" He clicked his tongue, still falsely cheerful.

"Can't say I have."

"Well, it's very interesting, actually." He lifted up the heavier bags without a wince and then stepped out into the sunlight, looking back at her. "Because now you know what it sounds like." He looked up at the sun, squinting at it with an odd amount of relief on his face. "Just like my old memories. Funny, that."

. . .

The pair of agents crossed the town line into Byrnesville around five PM, moving slow due both to even more debris that had built up during the night, and May's careful ground-tracking work. She'd found a possible set of recent shoe tracks several hours earlier, leading the way north into the curving, cracking road and took it as a good sign. Loki remained on edge, looking at the flat, dirty places where homes had once been.

Save for a shrine to the Virgin Mary, nothing remained in this abandoned town except the ruined roads and graffiti smeared by time and the recent storm. May sighed as he studied the shrine from a distance, her hands on her hips as she stared off up the broken road. "There's no shelter out this way and we won't make it back to the ranger shed before nightfall. Going north after her track is the best option."

He didn't say anything, just continued to study a few dead flowers stuck fast to the white stone.

"Last update says there's still a couple buildings up over the town line, belonging to residents that finally gave up and left. Or died." She shrugged. "Next demolishing tour wasn't scheduled for a while, they seem to like to fight it out in the state budget."

"I'm very tempted to suggest we leave. I detest saying that because it might show cowardice, but our quarry has been in the woods two nights and I cannot fathom how she's survived. It may be I don't want to. We leave, even if we must camp in the woods closer to our last refuge tonight with me holding up a barrier as best as I can in the open. It won't be pleasant, but we'll survive if we head back. Then we go and get that annoying goat, Strange, and we come back with, how to put it, magical napalm and _wipe_ the damned place out as we recover the damned book." He turned away from the shrine and looked up the road, his face drawn. "Two nights, Agent May, and she obviously did not use the shed we used on the first."

She didn't show her surprise at his obvious new levels of tension. The fact that, when given opportunity to show off more what he knew about old magical lore, he hadn't, had said plenty. The black book still scared the hell out of him. Based on what she'd herself seen, yeah, that seemed like a pretty sensible response. Just how much he was willing to admit it, however, was unnerving. "That your professional final opinion?"

He shook his head with a look of visible annoyance with himself. "The tracks you found were very recent. I still whiffed a trace of energy off them. If we can't confirm her life or death before we leave off our scouting, then we run the risk of abandoning someone alive, alone, and within the approaching influence of that damned thing." He looked wounded, somehow.

May remembered Simmons, who had accidentally touched the thing and paid for it. She'd come back from the experience just fine, but only because Loki himself was the better target. He hadn't taken any of that well, much to everyone's surprise, and his immediate about-face in handling the problem had kept him from being tossed out of the back of the in-flight Globemaster plane with about a hundred well-placed bullets in him. Loki spoke, interrupting the memory almost mournfully. "I can't do that. I'm still capable of a fair amount of bastardry, mind, but I can't quite do that to someone else."

She resettled the packs on her shoulders as he stepped back onto the shattered asphalt, looking down at an unreadable piece of pink and white graffiti. He'd said enough to tell her the rest, so she put on her calm agent's voice. The job was still the job. "We can get into Centralia before night if we pick it up. I've got the GPS locations of the remaining homes, might be able to make it to one of those if we really hustle."

"How's the cell reception out here?"

She shrugged. "Bad."

"There's a marvelous sign." He shrugged around the packs he was carrying, stalking his way up the road with his voice trailing behind him on a sardonic puff of wind. "Really how I planned to 'get away from it all.'"

. . .

The roads began to crack further apart as they approached the ruined city, at one point having to take a major detour around a segment that had bubbled up like a volcanic fault. It exuded boiling hot air and enough chemical smell to warn her away. Loki moved closer to peer in, tapping one foot to test how stable the ground was. He suggested widening the detour further in that even tone of voice that said there was a real problem here, so they did as the sun continued to shimmy down towards the horizon in ignorance of what that meant.

May realized she was getting nervous as sunset came into the last hour of remaining light, forcing her breath to become meditative. Not naturally nervous - more like it was being forced on her, and not by Loki, who now looked as prickly as a cat. Certainly they needed cover if possible, and a little time for him to do his magic barrier work, but still. She considered this, in between calming exhales, and then asked a question that she didn't really want to say out loud. "If we're getting closer to the book, can that mean we might still be in danger right now even though it's not full dark?"

At first, silence. And then he said the unusually taciturn, distinctly human word, "Yeah."

She unslung the shotgun again and kept moving, not able to pick up the pace any further due to the increasingly dangerous terrain. One wrong footstep on a bad patch of earth, and it wasn't going to be demons getting the last laugh. "Are we going to be in real trouble if we end up in the dark with you having to slap up a magic thingy in a hurry?"

" _Oh_ , yeah."

She checked the ammo load with a quick, trained motion, finding it satisfactory. "Terrific."

. . .

The sun was a sliver of blood red. May found she almost couldn't take her eye off of it, squinting to protect her vision each time she peeked and resisting the urge to check the cached GPS map again. They were still about a quarter of a away from one of the last known standing houses, and if the map was wrong, it was going to get interesting in a hurry. Loki kept a fast pace ahead of her, hands working in a set of complicated runes to set anchor and raise an assault if they had to give up and hunker down where they were. His drawn face gave answers to the questions she wouldn't ask. The rest was underlined by the sounds in the trees, liquid purrs and throaty calls from the shadows themselves.

They were being toyed with. It was obvious. They could lunge any time now, but they were going to wait until they thought their prey was going to be the most frightened. _Bad news for you guys,_ she thought, resettling her easy grip on the shotgun. _If I get eaten, I'm not even going to scream. Hope that makes me taste just a little bit more sour than you like._

A hiss rattled out from the trees, as if answering her thoughts with whatever a demon considered a laugh. She grit her teeth and kept moving fast behind Loki, glancing at the sun again. And again.

It dipped lower, a single thin line of quicksilver light that invited her to hold her breath and wait for the assault that was going to happen in a few more seconds. She continued to breathe normally anyway, then paused to taste the air coming in between still-gritted teeth. Fresh ash and natural smoke. She glanced at the ground, realizing they were walking through the remains of a recent firefight. Someone had been there before them, struggling against a similar assault. She had a damn good idea who, but what sort of shape Harkness was in was still in question. "Loki?"

He wasn't looking at the ground the way she had; the smell was enough and he needed his focus elsewhere. He watched the sun as it flashed a single flicker of wild green across the horizon, disappearing and leaving them only with the purpling black. He whirled towards the closest line of trees, hands up with the fingers curled like claws. Light flickered in the palms, ominous starlight. She could _feel_ the thrum of elemental energy building up around him. "Brace!"

She got behind him and readied her aim with the shotgun as the sounds began to crescendo into a hungry howl, prepared to fix on a target when he lit one up. She felt him tense again, same as the morning, and her finger began to press the trigger when the trees lit up in a flash of greenish-white fire and strange noise. Her eye fixed on the primary target, a thing with an oval face made of impossible rotating fangs and black eyes that seeped fluid down the freakishly hollowed cheeks. It hooted something in a language that made her ears ring and she snapped two shells worth of high impact shot at it as it pushed its way out of the trees, already enraged by Loki's feint.

The head snapped back and she saw tooth fragments fly through the air as Loki's first sustained magical assault began to fade. She noted the effectiveness of her attack with clinical detachment, already slapping in a reload and popping another demon hard in the center of mass. This one dropped to the ground and began to twitch, shrieking. May saw Loki's hand snap around, the fingers doing something elegant and clawlike both, and the thing began to freeze from the inside. Just as the dark cloaked back around them, she saw an icicle forcibly jam its way through the thing's skull. It cut off the shrieks, at least.

The handful of demonic creatures still remaining in the trees howled their offense and began to scrabble around to reposition. "Coming around behind," May snapped, getting her back against Loki's to cover him and raising the weapon again. Hard to track motion in the new dark. Too much sound to focus in on her own. She whipped her head around to identify where a new sound was coming from, marking it as north. Footsteps, human. The very way they needed. She was not in a mood to hope for the best. "We have hostiles incoming from the south. North, identify yourself!"

"Later," said someone hidden in the trees just on the other side of the road, monolithically calm and even. Almost robotic. "There's more of them on the way than just these. Shotguns don't bother them for long, and you're not going to hold out in the open. Follow me. You're right on top of the shelter. And watch for the line, you'll see it."

May glanced up at Loki as the shadow disappeared back up the road, the two of them wrapped in the smell of magic smoke and wafting demon blood. She could sense his bemusement. "Yeah?"

" _Or_ we can have a standing shootout with at least fourteen hungry de-"

She shoved him hard with her elbow to cut him off, then got running.


	7. Haunt of Fear

7\. Haunt of Fear

. . .

The line of salt gleamed in the dark, just strongly enough to ensure neither agent scuffled it in passing. Beyond, they saw the figure of what had to be Aggie Harkness sitting on the bowed-out wooden stoop of a house. A lantern flickered its softly orange light from inside, and the wood creaked as she stood back up when they crossed over. "Welcome to scenic Centralia," she said, still with that mechanical, even tone of voice. "Come in and be welcome."

With that, she went back inside the house, leaving the door open for them.

In the gleam of a soft light Loki summoned in the palm of his hand, the pair looked at each other. May asked the obvious, pitching it low enough for just themselves. "You think she's okay?"

Loki stared at her. "Would _you_ be, at this point?"

"I'd probably be staring down the barrel of about six months of SHIELD-mandated therapy." She lifted an eyebrow, allowing a moment of her own dry humor. "Probably going to happen to me anyway. Standard procedure. I might even show up this time. Did that thing look like a cement mixer made of fangs or what the hell was that?"

"I don't know, I wiped it out of my memory a second later. It's a good skill to have if you think you're going to encounter monstrous perversions of nature more than once in a lifetime." Loki looked at the house with a shrug, ignoring the look he got. "Well, this is what we came for. Let's assess the situation and whatall, and mayhap come the morn we can get the Hel out of here."

"We safe in there?"

He turned to glance back at the salt line, and the black trees where their pursuers still lingered after a hard dash towards the distant light. The trees shivered against the black sky. No stars. His hand closed around the magelight to extinguish it, his voice lilting out with mild humor as he moved away from the gleaming line of salt. "Moreso than out here, likely. To be honest, I'd rather find out the hard way than loiter around with the pleasant company for much longer."

. . .

May looked the hunching woman over. Middle aged, seemed in good health. A mop of darkish hair going a shocking white at the roots. Dye job growing out, maybe. Dirty jeans and a plain blue spaghetti strap top that revealed arms stained with black lines. They looked like fresh soot drawn in geometric patterns. Runic, almost. May didn't recognize them, but they seemed like things Loki might be familiar with. She glanced at him while she set her bags down by the door and saw the same assessment on his face, a curious frown deepening the lines of his mouth. "Thanks for the shout," she said, staying neutral.

Harkness said nothing. She kept fussing with a pack of her own, then came up with bottles of water. She reached up and thunked them down atop an abandoned low bureau that ran along the wall, the sort of thing that once held the good silverware and table linens for a now lost family. "Not for drinking. Sorry." She resumed rummaging, things clacking and falling over inside the cheap nylon bag. Loki was still saying nothing, busy assessing the room in that silent way he had. May rolled her eyes at him, taking up the social slack. "We have some supplies if you need."

That got an eye drifting their way, a slightly glazed-over stare of greyish blue in the round face. _Shellshock_ , noted May with clinical familiarity, studying the almost slack expression and staring eyes and finding it all too familiar. That made sense, considering the context. Unless it was something worse. The glazed eye fixed on Loki, narrowing before disappearing back to whatever she was fussing with.

The whisper came on a puff of air. " _She suspects something of who I am._ "

May glanced at him. No evidence he had talked. Never said he was capable of telepathy, but maybe he'd done something close. She frowned, also not finding his suspicion all that likely. The tall figure with neatly combed but still long black hair was technically recognizable - he hadn't bothered to come to the state under one of his usual minor illusions - but most footage of the once-hostile alien invader from the day of his attack was blurry or classified. Still, there were some images out there to be found. Theoretically possible, sure. But a normal, rural person wasn't going to ID him that easily.

Unless Harkness was capable of a little more than that. May filed that away, too. "Do you need medical help?"

Aggie Harkness dropped onto her butt with a sigh, tugging her legs under her. "Either you're in a very bad place at a very bad time, or something very strange is going on. Because of the kind of day I'm having, I think it's probably the latter." She looked up. May could see her face creasing, thinking hard. "Days."

Loki finally came out of whatever thoughtful trance he had been engaging in. "Two nights."

"Feels longer. Are you federal?" Aggie looked up at them, tugging a notebook onto her lap. "I don't think Homeland Security does demon invasions, much else whatever the hell this is."

"It doesn't matter," said Loki, tense. He took a step closer, almost looming over the woman. "I would like to ask how you've survived this long. Where did you take shelter last night?"

"I didn't." Aggie gave up a tinny laugh that echoed off the scraped wallpaper and the old wood behind. "I kept walking. Slow, in the dark. Had to watch my footing and I didn't want to use the flashlight. They're not trying to kill me. They like to stay close. I've scrapped with them when they tried to touch me. But they don't try to kill. I think… that's probably worse."

"Do you have any idea why?"

"Do _you_?" For a moment, Harkness was _there,_ focusing on Loki like a fire's light. Then her focus wandered away again. Her hands fussed with the notebook she'd pulled out, toying with the edges of the pages with fidgeting fingertips. There were small white papercuts crisscrossing under her nails.

May looked at Loki, not willing to get in the middle of this just yet. He kept looking down at the woman on the floor, his brow furrowing. Then, rather to her surprise, he sat down on the floor across from her. A handful of feet away, but on her level. Interesting tactic. "I have some ideas."

Aggie didn't look up at him. She stayed dully focused on the soft rustle of the pages. The monotone was back. "There's something out there. Deep, where the town used to be, waking up the old ghosts. It's singing to them, almost. Like it belongs. Maybe it does. What is it? Do I even want to know?"

"One of the most dangerous artifacts I've ever encountered. A book of utter, living chaos that consumes all those it encounters and twists it to the will and mercy of its master."

Dull lack of surprise. "Yeah, huh? How did it get out here?"

"I put it there."

Her chin lifted up. "You did." He inclined his head slightly in response. To May's surprise, she laughed again. This one sounded alive, vital. Hearty, even. It clearly took Loki aback. "Oh, my God. You didn't know, did you?"

"What didn't I know?"

" _Anything_. Oh, Jesus. You're an alien or something. Something's off with you, magic and something not like human blood. I can smell it like I smell _them_. How would _you_ have known?"

May was forever too restrained to do more than twitch under pressure, but she _did_ allow a startled mental blurt of _I'll be goddamned._ "I'm lost. Possibly more than he is. What got missed?"

"All the shit pits on Earth and you chucked a demon book into this one." Harkness dropped the notebook and clapped her hands to her face, almost moaning. May glanced back at the packs. There was an emergency medkit in those go-bags, always. If she had to sedate the woman, no problem. "Oh, _hell_. You blew it. What was option two?"

"Hell Pits of Turkmenistan." He spoke in an odd deadpan, at too much of a loss to do anything other than give up an actual answer.

Her hands dropped from her face. "Never mind, that would have probably been worse. Get that Faustian thing going on." She looked at him, blank-faced and silent as her eyes flickered around. When she spoke, it was in a clinical recitation. She didn't reach for the bottles of water. "Centralia's become a go-to environment for people looking for a generic horror story setting. A place where fires never go out, where mists rise at night. Where nightmares walk to remind the living of everything they've done wrong. Movies, books, video games… Good place to leave something that could feed on that kind of history, make it its own." Another one of those vital, creepy laughs. "Naturally, that's not the whole story. From the witch murders to the iffy land deals, to the various theories about what actually happened under the skin of the earth."

May took a step closer. "What's the story you know?"

Aggie shook her head. She glanced at Loki, freshly tired. "You couldn't have known. So how is it you're out here cleaning up the problem?"

"It's a long tale."

"I guess it would have to be." She looked away.

What the hell. May took another couple steps in and settled on the floor, joining it up into a small circle. She cocked her head and examined Harkness again. The talking seemed to be settling her out, and nothing about the two of them was setting her off afresh. "Friend of yours said you were a historian. That how you know the local legends, studying the area? Family history?"

Still-dozy eye flickered back to her, iris still not quite matching the light of the room. Unnerving, but also possible in a case like this. This wasn't someone fully handling the situation she was in. It was just basic survival, a moment of calm in the middle of the storm. "A historian." A small chuckle. "One way to put it. Bet I could get some great footnotes for a paper right now." It came out flat, almost disinterested. "What are you guys then, since you don't want to answer?" Neither of them answered. "SHIELD? I thought they got shut down." She blinked once, robotic. "Wonder how old Johnny at U-Pitt missed that. He's been living for that conspiracy theory. If there had been proof, I would have gotten at least fifty emails."

"He'd best get on it while he can. Rumor holds we're to be going public again soon." Loki sounded bemused, cocking his head politely." I'm appreciating how very not thrown you are right now."

"It's the shock. There is an army of demons beyond a millimeter ring of salt I threw out, fully not expecting that trick to work a second time. Thanks loads, Mom. If I survive another day, which I'm not exactly optimistic about, I'll start caring about this new weird development around then. I'll pencil it in." She looked at him. "You really didn't know. You didn't do it just to mess up the area further."

He shook his head.

"Wow." It came out half-dead, making the single word sound eerie and sarcastic both.

"We're going to try and evacuate in the morning." May cut in, trying to ease the topic away from Loki's past crimes. "We can backtrack fairly quickly to the town now that we know the route, get you out of here safe and move out the rest of your neighborhood. We've got some external resources to help us deal with whatever's deeper inside the ruins. Your part in this is almost over."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever." She was gone again, her voice touched with disbelief. "I'm not getting out of this that easily." The next came in a whisper, exhaled like horror towards the cracked window. "They burned my _house_ down."

"Your cat survived."

That got Aggie's attention back, her gaze crawling towards Loki at his calm statement. Not glazed this time, wet. "Sabrina?"

"The pastor woman has her."

A hand came drifting back up to her face as it crumpled for less than a second. "Okay. Okay. That's good." She exhaled. The next came in a flash of white hot fury, pouring out between her fingers. "I wish I would have kicked through that _goddamn_ line when I left!"

"No, you don't." Loki shook his head. "Was that the first thing you did, when you saw what was going on?"

"Sky turned black with smoke. Ash from the old mines all lit up in it. I could smell _them_ on the air when I went outside with the bag, knew something had happened up in the old mine town. Mom always taught me to keep good salt on hand. Saw that old bitch, Marty, watching me from inside. Wouldn't stop me then. Was the morning after that, when old man Derry got some of the survivors over the line, that's when she decided to get mouthy at me." Another creaking, bitter laugh from behind the hand. "Not that anyone would say much to stop her at that point. They were too scared. Everything could be the enemy."

"But your first instinct was to protect them anyway. Knowing what bitter old women like that can do, and you acted not to save your own home but all of theirs." Loki cocked his head. "The line holds. Your pet is safe, and your neighbors, for better and for worse, and the pastor, while weakened in the face of their fears, said what she could to defend you to us. That much was worth the fight."

Harkness's hand kept working at her face, pinching and contorting the brow like her skull was trying to tear itself apart. It wasn't clear if she'd heard him. "I need to try to sleep. You should, too. None of us will, but it's worth a try." She started to shove herself up and away from the makeshift circle, retreating towards her bags, pausing for a moment. "Don't look out the windows. Ever. They have things to show you. They drill, they know what's in there to bleed out. They like to slink up close, catch the light." She shook her head. "Whatever you do, _never_ look at the mirror-faced ones."

May wanted to ask her what she saw, but Aggie Harkness grabbed one of the sealed bottles of water and tugged it to herself like a charm before dropping herself in a corner in an exhausted, softly breathing heap. In the cabin was now only silence, and the awkward expression the two agents shared. Loki's expression remained thoughtful, and she could tell at least one of the questions he was still working on. She wondered it herself.

Had the black book already gained a hold on the woman's mind, or was she still fighting to keep a hold of herself? Either way, the best solution was going to be to get the hell out of the zone fast, before something worse happened.

May resisted the urge to glance out the window anyway, hearing the low thrum of something enormous moving around in the cracking trees. The sun, like the morning earlier, would drive it away, of course. But until then, the temptation lingered. Look it in the eye, and fight back. She shook her head to knock the sensation away, and watched Loki as he leaned over to peer at the notebook the woman had left behind. Knowing Aggie wasn't actually asleep, he didn't trouble it. But he looked at it, with a curious little frown.

She shrugged at him, then went to the bags for something to drop her head onto for a little while.

As promised, none of them slept.


	8. Tales from the Crypt

8\. Tales from the Crypt

. . .

 _The book does not sleep. It is vital, alive, awoken. Hungry. Hot wind rustles through its pages where it lays amidst the center of a pile of broken bodies - all them tributes brought to it in the black ash of rebirthing and the dark of the first night, those who could not run fast enough and became destined only to be consumed. It heals; the old scars of its last defeat become ripened black flesh and the stitchings of its hellbound spine gleam like fresh nerves. The Name and sigil upon it is ruby once more, heartsblood red and potent._

 _The thrum of worshipful humming comes from beyond this circle of meat and blood, bound servants by name and by word, ethereal chains connecting them to their handlers, the robed figures who blink in and out of existence around the fringes of the tainted place. They stand silent as stone, having waited for this day for over two centuries and more; waiting for the day the darker gods would see them and know them for their sacrifices. Children of stolen pages, the daughters of the Word and Name. Exiled from one haven, only to lay their curse on another._

 _Seven shadows. Six fulfilled by the promises of old. One lay empty, waiting for its inheritor._

 _And in the pages of the black book, a single name flickered black and green and gold and tasting of potent alien blood._

 _Yes._

 _The Darkhold would gain a new page soon, should its new tenders complete their rites well and true. A page of flickering pale skin and illusory undertones of rich Jotun blue, a mystic trophy of another victory in its God's name. And upon this fresh parchment, words of eternal pain to be whispered soft into Chthon's ear alone. The collector would take his eternal due._

 _Then the darkness would spread as it had been fated to in times of old. Uncontested, blotting out the light. Let the balance be sundered at last._

 _The pages fluttered again like a sigh of command, and the stygian wings took flight to ensure their captives yet hunkered through the night. There was work to be done, traps to be laid as the scouts kept high watch. The circle to be closed. Let them fools have the dawn to see their fate as it drew close around them. In this, the penultimate night of becoming, the Darkhold would rest as the earth purges itself of its own black fire._

 _The six shadows drew closer, honoring it with each exalted exhale and trilling scream of agony. For them, the Word would come in time and they would be glad for it._

 _And beyond the last few standing ruins of the dead town, the borers began their work under the broken surface of the world._

. . .

The deadfall wasn't the only thing blocking the road back south. A new fissure had somehow violently opened along the ruined asphalt trails less than a mile away from Aggie's adopted shelter, contorting and melting the graffiti left behind and filling the air with dangerous chemical intent. Heat shimmered for meters above them, a rainbow of death to brighten the early morning. May was already several meters up along the west side of the new problem, looking to see how far they would have to go to detour around it, and already suspecting what they were actually dealing with was a demonic black mirror of the sanctified salt lines Harkness kept leaving in her wake.

"Should have seen that coming." Loki's voice was so calm it ran a chill up May's spine. In it was a confirmation of her suspicion, and a deepening of it. He turned to look back at the mask that was Aggie Harkness's face. The woman's only movement in response to his words was to worm her hands along the strap of one of her own bags. She hadn't said much on leaving the house, just gamely packed up her few things yet strewn along the floor and went along in their shadows. There was no surprise in her posture. Resignation was written on her skin, like stone etchings. "You did."

Her eyes drifted over him, then back to the new rift. "They're not going to let anyone leave that easily. Not this close to the center of the old town. Not this close to the heart."

"Mm." Loki shrugged, looking at May as she began to stalk back. "Then I do the next most logical thing."

"Swallow your pride and call Strange for a rescue?"

"Going to be a bit prickly going down, I won't lie about that." He shrugged off the smaller pack that held the satphone. "But there's medicine hearty enough for such ailments." He glanced up at her as he fussed with the panels that protected the interface. "A whole damn bottle's worth of it, waiting back at the lair."

May crossed her arms against herself and paced herself between Loki and Harkness, keeping her eye on both. Aggie had turned away to look north into the trees of Centralia, where empty patches in the distance showed where businesses and roads had once been. More than once, May saw a flicker of orange from somewhere deep, like a solar flare. Hot again. Hotter than the morning before. She felt a bead of sweat trickle its way down the cool skin atop her spine. Unnatural summer. Out here, it wasn't just the natural environment turning against them. She glanced up at the sun where it hid behind a veil of haze, narrowing her eyes as if it was betraying them personally.

She turned when Loki dropped himself onto the ground, crosslegged, still working with the phone. Something tight had drawn itself across his face, and he was moving his hands across its surface with nervous yet still graceful intent. "Loki?"

"Don't talk to me yet." It was curt, but not intended to be hostile. The chill came back, colder, as she watched him continue to coax the machine into life. She let her fingertips dig into the arms of her black leather jacket, waiting to hear the worst. He muttered under his breath a few minutes later, raw human-style irritation, and then the thing she expected but didn't want to hear. "I don't understand."

"You're not getting a signal out."

He shook his head once, sharp and pissed off. "It's not cellular, it's hardened, it's magical, and _not_ shoddy work, as you damned well know of me. I knew what we were walking into. I did every gods- _damned_ thing I could to prevent this." He looked up, grey-green eyes going emerald hot. She knew how to read that in him by now. He wasn't going to get afraid, not in daylight, but he was going to stay mad to keep himself focused. He was not a man that cared to be jerked around by the whims of fate, and there had just been one hell of a solid yank on his chain. Behind her, she caught the shadow of Aggie shifting her weight. "I'm going to keep trying."

"You won't get it working," said Harkness, dull. "We need to get back to the shelter. You can try again there. Not that it'll mean anything."

He didn't budge. He looked down at the truculent machine, his fingers curling in as if he were simply going to reach in and rearrange its guts until it either pleased him or fell into dust.

"We can't stay out here. If you can't make that thing work fast, then we're going to start running out of time in daylight, too. The rules are going to change, I think. It's getting stronger, this book of yours." Aggie didn't stop looking north. "I can hear them now. Right now. Approaching. The old balance is going to go out of joint."

May watched the furrow in Loki's brow deepen. "She right?"

His silence was all the answer she needed.

"Then we double-time it back to the shelter house."

He still sounded argumentative. "It's too close to the center of the book's rising power. If we can find a single path away from here, perhaps at least make it closer to that shrine-"

"We _can't_." That was Aggie, a shrill cry of frustration cutting through the thick, hot air. "Don't you get it? You're not in control here. That _thing_ out there is. You didn't mean for this to happen, fine. But this was a place waiting for a possibility like this one. You have _no_ idea."

Loki looked up at her, green fire and icy chill. "What exactly do you mean?"

Harkness visibly hunkered in on herself, going silent again. In and out, never quite fully there. The shellshock… or again, something more. May didn't know. She kept watch on the situation between the pair, waiting to step in.

Loki's presence seemed to be growing, that sense of menace he built around himself like armor. "What has been sleeping here?"

She shook her head.

"Gods _damn_ it."

"Loki." May put her hand up to try and cool him down, then abruptly realized her mistake using his real name. He was spiraling into an absolute fury of frustration; not a liability yet, but he was clearly off balance. Aggie didn't seem to notice or care. Maybe she already knew something more of what he was, maybe it just didn't matter to her. The word came back to her mind, unbidden - _witch_. There was a lot here they simply didn't understand. The first step, she decided, was going to be puzzling out what was going on with their erstwhile rescue, and what she had to do with the secrets buried in this place. "We're moving back. It's not optimal, I hear you. But there aren't any other choices."

He managed to dredge the old petulance out of his voice before speaking, the words hot but also stoic and prepared. "No. There are not." He pulled himself upright with his usual ferocious grace, looking down at Harkness. "We need information if we're going to get out of this alive. You have pieces of it. As do I. We are going back to shelter, Lady Harkness. We are going to reinforce what you've put into play, to be sure we have enough time for what we must do to survive. And then we are going to _talk._ "

She didn't look at him. She kept looking north, her hands working at the straps of her bag. "Yes. I suppose we have to."

. . .

Loki's hands cut fast through the air, working in pure light. A small, fine knife was in his hands, a tool he'd brought out of the depths of his own bag that he'd brought into the territory. An _athame_ , as he referred to it once to May in an aside as he got to work. Some sort of ritual tool, not just a weapon. It looked incredibly old; well worn and well cared for, with a pommel marked with silver and beautiful tiny blue gems. In his hands, it glinted like fairy glass.

It was a reminder of what he could be at need, as well as what he had once been long ago. A mage in a world not his own, unlike anyone else. The runes he was leaving behind seemed to melt into the earth alongside the line of salt, flickering their peaceful rainbow and then leaving the earth untouched as they faded away. May was never going to be a part of that world, had no deep interest or talent in that aspect of it, but even she could sense the power he was leaving behind. Formidable enough, when in his element. Had it been _this_ competent, controlled Loki that attacked Earth several years ago… he might have actually gotten somewhere with his plans.

The thought didn't have the tinge of worry following it that it used to. May was confident enough in the weird friendship the alien had with Coulson to believe those days were long gone.

The activity brought Harkness out of her shell a little as well, watching the work with actual interest and a flicker of life in the dull blue eyes. May wondered what sort of senses she had, and what she was seeing in the air above the trail Loki left behind himself. But aside for curt missives between the two - Harkness, doing something with packets of herbs and even more salt, and Loki at his duty - there was silence.

According to all May's devices, it was barely two in the afternoon. But the sky above was turning the deep, pockmarked grey of a sky before a late evening storm. For her part, she eventually walked inside and checked and double-checked every piece of standard munitions she had brought, before beginning some basic systems study on the failed satphone just in case.

As he had, she sat on the floor with it on her lap, studying the connectors on the inside control panel.

"The signal is blocked outright. The device itself is fine. My frustrations aside, that much was plain upon first glance." Loki came in from behind her, sounding weary.

She didn't look at him, thumbing the access panel shut. He was right. "You cooling off?"

"Enough that I can suggest one way out of the worst case scenario." He settled down next to her, rummaging a hand into one of the other packs and coming up with water bottles. He left one by her knee. "We shelter in place and wait for Strange to notice we haven't checked in. Won't take long, he's going to be keenly alert to this situation. What it will take is _some_ time for him to make an entry. He'll be facing such unearthly barricades as well and the book has a vested interest in keeping the man empowered by its own counterpart well at bay. Maybe another night before his kind of backup lends itself to our aid. Maybe more. This is its realm, right now." He popped open the lid and took a long drink.

"Can we handle one more night like this?"

Loki looked over his shoulder, leaning back until he picked out where Aggie stood by the inside of the line. Herbs were catching fire in the palm of her hand. His nostrils picked up the whiff of rich sage and sulphur. Basics, but reliable here. "I'm not certain." He looked back at May. "The problem is how little we actually know about the situation in here. And for that…"

"You're not going to drag it out of her, Loki. She's rattled, she's tired. She's clearly scared out of her mind by whatever she knows. Not going to get anywhere if you pull the wrong thread."

He flopped a hand, tired. "I know. My ire fades. She'll speak. It's her neck on the line. Possibly more than ours, by the tension implicit in her posture. Enough clues there to worry." He shook his head. "You know this is its revenge, too. You're caught in the middle of a grudge match between a living book of chaos and a mage who has already been compromised once before by the damned thing. He warned me of that, of course. Strange."

"You did what you could to prepare, and you still walked into this because it was the right thing to do." May shrugged, outwardly as calm as ever. "We see what comes next, then we deal with it."

"I don't want to know what comes next. I've seen enough glimpses of such things for a lifetime, _my_ lifetime." Loki put the water bottle down. "But there's little choice. So, yes. We _deal_ , as you say." Soft padding feet approached, getting him to turn again. "All of us."

Harkness joined the pair. May, having left her water untouched, pushed it towards her. A good offer by Loki, but clearly the other woman needed it more. Hesitant at first, Aggie reached out for it. She sounded defeated. "So you want to know what really happened out here. Why this is one of the worst places on Earth to leave a book that can be empowered by the ruins of what's been left behind."

"If that's the right place to start." Loki leaned back, propping himself up by the arms.

"I don't know that. All I know is the story I'm going to give you. The old family legend." Aggie Harkness opened the bottle and looked into the water, like scrying. "The Salem Seven, and the hidden battle that finally buried this town almost a hundred and fifty years after the last blood sacrifice." She looked up, a tiny, wry crease at the corner of her mouth. "This is what my mom gave me, instead of the lambs and their troll bridge. So let's settle in, and tell campfire tales till the demons knock at the door."


	9. Unsilent Hills

9\. Unsilent Hills

. . .

 _1844, Roaring Creek Township, an area to be one day called Centralia_

"Fourth dead calf this week. Took the tongue, took the tail, same shit as before." The old rancher turned to spit a long, wet gob along the horsetrail he was ambling along, looking over at Alexander Rae. "Ain't going to be able to keep settlers filing in, the rumor gets out any further'n it has. Send a letter while you can, sir. My honest advice. Get this done with by harvest, get God looking at this place again."

Rae shook his head. "I'm not calling for a witch hunter, Jaeger. Not for livestock done foul by nature, that'll put a worse word out than the tale of your most regrettable losses. Allowing nonsense in our heads like that, we'll be the laughingstocks of the region."

He was answered first with a grunt that almost ran counter to what was said next. "I respect you, Mister Rae, and so I will not take it close to myself that you call my warnings nonsense. I saw the shadows in the night, I heard them sounds, and now I got cattle I can't do much more'n bury. The meat's gone bad in the bodies, can smell it plain." The rancher turned and stuck a dirty finger up at the sky, accusing _somebody,_ if not the settlement's founder himself. "Going to be short on that meat. Milk this winter and the next year, 'less a trader gives me a kindness. And I ain't the only one. Busch, Vogel, they both lost crop and cattle this month. Fuckin' corn's got must on it-"

"Language, son."

" _Fuck_ my language. I'll apologize and pray before Father Jannsen on Sunday, but that ain't gonna bring back what I lost. What we got cursed out here. Something's gone wrong with the land." Jaeger's creaking old voice spiraled up even as Rae put a hand up to try and soothe the man. Rae knew better than to come out here to the fields and the settler's muck in the fine waistcoats and linens he put on for town business, so they both stood in simple cottons and brown leathers, and that much helped his cause with the other man. Prickly lips pursed under grey stubble and tangling beard. "I don't hold you accountable, sir. Ain't asking you for the money lost. But something _got_ to be done, even you can see that."

"When we get the mines going, Jaeger, it'll turn around on its own. This is good earth, but rough and in need of taming." Rae shook his head. "A few more years, that's all we need to make this work. Witches are long done, old friend. Our good forefathers drove them all back fifty years gone and more and the night's clear. Not witches, Jaeger. Bears and wolf and a few lingering tribesmen. We face nature, not Satan's own evils."

"You say that, Rae. But you ain't seen." Jaeger lost his composure and grabbed the other man's arm, knuckles tight. "You come look at these bodies. You come and _see_ what I'm tryin' to tell you. This ain't natural before our God. The night's come back to haunt us, and all your logic shit ain't gonna bide it back."

Rae twisted his arm, trying to pull away and feeling suddenly unnerved by the ferocity in the rancher. This was a scared man, even in the light of day. Words weren't going to soothe him much more, but maybe looking at the mess with a rational eye alongside might help. Not to his own preferences; he was all gears and graphs and timetables, but what was a dead animal but God's own lost creation? Nothing to fear there. "All right, old friend. I'll come see what you found this morn."

. . .

Rae hesitated in mid-bend, the putrescent smells wafting from the torn open carcass of the calf enough to make his head whirl and his long-ago breakfast tumble loose in his belly. One night dead did all that? True enough the late-lingering summer was a hot one, and true also the flies had been thick everywhere since June. But no maggots crawled along the edges of the wounds, nothing squirmed into new life in amidst the ruins of the old one. This was a stink from somewhere deep within the meat itself. Hidden rot. He grimaced, unable to help it.

"Ranched thirty years and more, and that is no smell you ever should get from the fresh-carved, sir." Jaeger hung back by the fence, here in the deep corner of his field. The calf had gotten out somehow, run at night under the full moon, and died here closest to where the trees still gathered the thickest. "Even if you clip the guts just wrong and taint the meat, you shouldn't be smelling that. That's a wrong smell, ain't natural, ain't right. Somethin' fed on that, but left no trace behind."

Rae had no choice but to take that for true. All his meals came from another's hand now; he hadn't had to see a farmyard's base brutality since he was a boy. Still, he fought himself down to a kneel to see what the damage actually looked like.

"Ain't no earthly claw, sir. No bear claw, no wolf claw."

No. Perhaps not. Sharp, clean edges along the edges of the rotting skin. Like the cutters he used on prints and maps. A chill ran down his spine. He reached down for a clean twig to prod at the wound and turned white as it peeled away as clean as a freshly boiled roast. The smell came again, stronger and almost wild.

Now Jaeger sounded calm. "Will you turn to me now, sir, and say that looks a bear or a wolf's work?"

Rae shook his head. He had to admit that much - but not that it was witches. For _God's_ sake. Still. "Your others looked like this?"

"Aye. Wife says we're gonna take the tongues tonight, boil 'em up. Dump the bodies tomorrow, down by the pits you all marked out for waste." Another hawking spit, over the edge of the fence. "Let 'em burn, when your boys do their digging later."

"What for?" He turned on his heel, balancing carefully to look up at the rancher. He kept his face neutral.

"Her ma used to say it'd draw the witch out what did it. Boil the tongue, stick a nail in it. Rile her up, draw her out. Feel it in her own tongue, like as not." Jaeger sounded grim. "If'n you won't find a hunter, then we gotta do it ourselves. I got to protect my children, and the town's children. I'll get you a face, sir, maybe her name. Then we got to trial the woman and get this taken care of. It's the only way. My momma came out from the northeast, she remembered the things her momma told her before. This gets worse, I don't know how you gonna stop it. They bring their demons, we're in deep."

Rae opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. Folk cures and protections might be enough to calm the man, and more than likely nothing would come of the foolish stunt. A night or so without an assault would be enough to calm the rancher down - and that would slow down the others with their losses, too. "All right." He stuck the twig back into the earth, not wanting to look at the calf again. Not natural, but he didn't know _what_ that meant. "All right. But you gentlemen, you go pray with the Father when he opens the doors. I don't want anyone taken up without due cause."

"We find something, we'll come right to you. That's a promise, sir."

He straightened up and stuck his hand out, like a gentlemen ought. "On your word, Jaeger."

"Yessir, Rae."

. . .

Not even full dawn, out there in the new settlement, when the banging came fast at Alexander Rae's door. A mess of voices hollered for him and he flung his dressing robe on as his wife shuddered in the bed, calling for their crying, frightened children to calm down. "On my way down, on my way! Hold on!"

He flung open the door and _smelled_ what the furor was about before they even spoke. His eyes drifted west, towards where many of the cattlemen and field hands had taken up the land's work. Saw the fire still guttering, with the smoke plume wafting the way of the first few hard-hoed roads he'd seen made. "Oh my Jesus," he said, a full prayer and not a blasphemy. "What farm?"

He knew by the stutter in the young man's voice, knew by the way the smoke drifted, but didn't want to hear the answer. In the dawn's light, the man still looked like he'd been blasted dead white. "The Jaeger place, sir. I heard 'em screaming."

Rae reached out and grabbed at a random shoulder. He didn't waste time screaming at them for coming to get him first instead of at least trying to save Jaeger's children. He was supposed to be in charge, so he did the best he could with his mind in a whirl. He thought of their last conversation, the nonsense of drawing witches out. The idea of vengeance. All of it seemed stronger in the early hours, before the sun was on them true. "Get the buckets, let's go, fast!"

. . .

Father Jannsen strode into the hall of the far too small building that passed for his holy church, squinting to see the shape of widowed young Fenna where the high noon put her in shadow. No doubt already wringing her hands in the rough-hewn pews for the Jaeger family. Devoted soul, even if her methods were not fully in line with his. Jannsen had his sympathies with the simple Dutch kinsmen gone east into Lancaster, who put aside the folk ways and trusted themselves fully into God's hands. Still, though. Fenna was a kindly, good hearted woman. He resettled his Bible where he had it clasped against his chest and stepped forward towards the kneeling figure.

"A moment, Father. Pray forgive." Fenna's hands worked against each other. He saw the fresh black markings on them, frowning. Charcoal and sulphur. And underneath that, the scent of soft incense. "I ask our Lord to bless the work I do in his name."

"Don't trespass on the salvation Jesus offers the Jaeger family, Fenna. It's not for you to give."

She shook her head once under the small, tight bonnet. "I do not, not now nor ever. I clear the way for them, nothing more. I will not stand between them and our Lord, I ask only for the shadows to be sent away." She looked up from the seals she'd painted on the backs of her hands, the stars with Moses's name and other, more secret words scrawled somehow neatly along the skin. A chill ran down his spine regardless. If she were not more careful, this well-meant cunning woman was going to run afoul of the hot spirits in the new town. They were too frightened to look closer and know this was not their enemy. "There's dark work here. I heard the rumor Jaeger was going to ask Rae to bring in a witch hunter."

Jenner sat in the pew beside her, feeling his thumb rub comfortingly against the fine leather of his book. "We cannot give in to undue superstition," he said, trying to not make it sound like a chide against her.

Fenna's brow furrowed at him anyway.

"An accident, Fenna. A test while we struggle against nature."

"No accident, Father. There's something awry in the woods." She pulled her hands away from where the light struck them, tugging them into the creases of her petticoat. "If we in pride will not send out to hunt it, then we need best to defend against it until opinions turn."

"Your tools to that end always concern me." Again, the caution that he did not chide her unduly. He believed in her faith - but her wiles, the old powwow lore of her mothers, always concerned him. There was a thin line that protected a mortal heart against dark temptation, and he believed it even more fragile within the cunning-folk.

"We are raised true, meant to protect, Father." She at least had no doubts. "I can hold this newborn little village by myself so long as the darkness remains in the woods, but I think it will not last. Not if what haunts took that poor family." She looked away. "Dark use for such things. They did not find the bodies in the flames. That makes me afraid."

It wasn't a question. Fenna couldn't know by any normal means; the word had been kept between Rae and a handful of those few who had gone out to the farm to try and save them. And the priest himself, of course. But yet she knew the truth of it. Jannsen felt a trickle down the nape of his neck. He was uncomfortable keeping the secret of the new town's transient 'good luck charm,' but there was little else he could do. Particularly now, when revealing her might put her at risk of the same fears intended for whatever fables might lurk at night.

Particularly now, with her husband only just lost this last winter. He took a breath. "Let the Lord guide us, Fenna. The town, your child, the poor, lost Jaegers. Don't put yourself at undue risk. For your girl's sake."

"My girl will be fine. And hers after. My faith will see to that." Fenna took a handful of her skirts and pulled herself upright, bobbing a neat curtsy to the priest. "Thank you for the company, Father. I'm going to retreat home and consider what might come next." She glanced up towards a shard of green glass that passed for a stained window; the only exorbitant gift in God's name he could install in this tiny chapel. "Be wary at night. I worry the boundary lines won't hold for much longer. I must strengthen them, best I can." She shook her head, still sounding full of that eerie conviction. "Won't be long 'til we find the first poor soul done like the calves. That's when I'll know we're in the thick. When the shadows leave the lost to be found."

Jannsen thought she'd left. He jumped a little when she reached down to touch his shoulder. "Take Rae's ear. Get him to hire a hunter for the winter. Just in case, Father. Just in case."

. . .

Loki listened to the dull-voiced but intricate recitation of history, mentally pulling together what wasn't said and what was meant into a finer visual in his mind. "The trick with the tongues indeed caused offense to what lurked in the woods."

"Far as I've ever been told." Aggie rubbed at her arms, her eyes never straying from the warping wood of the old floor. "Likely not because it actually _did_ anything, but because of the intent behind the move." She paused for a moment, eyes narrowing in some private consideration. "Anyway, not all the folklore makes sense when you look back at it. Purposes get muddled, symbols change and then become lost. But the Jaeger family, well, that was the canary in Centralia's coal mines. Of course, technically those came later, along with the name, but I think you get my meaning."

"And the cunning woman, that Fenna… clearly not her first battle." He arched an eyebrow, finding himself curious about the long ago woman's fate. Next to him, May shifted comfortably. "You called her a transient guest. This new village wasn't intended to be a permanent place for her."

"Fenna's husband had been a teamster until his accident, and she rode with him whenever possible. Made her mobile. She'd spend a season or so in one of the new settlements cropping up, would try to broker treaties with whoever - or whatever - was local, then move on before someone painted her as a witch outright. She usually had an understanding with the local religious house… but not always. Salem might have been decades ago, but the stories were still popular. And as it turned out…"

"Popular for a reason."

Aggie frowned, agreeing and underlining the issue. "Big mix of history and fable there. Mostly what happened to those women was a crime of fear and outright ordinary sexism. But there were a few things that didn't make it into most history books. Hard to suss it out between all the pop culture bull that's sprung up since, but there's always a few mysteries hidden under the flash and dazzle."

"These 'Seven.'"

She nodded. "They whisper in between the lines. Wasn't their first time. Salem wasn't their last. And as it turned out, they'd set their sights on midland Pennsylvania long before Rae and his miners ever had. But for what purpose? Well, that's what Fenna had to find out, come wintertime."


	10. The Omen

10\. The Omen

. . .

A line of salt would have been too fragile to last as the land's protection. Instead, buried around the perimeter of occupied small homes and businesses that made up the still growing township, was a series of small wooden tokens. Each one was engraved with a mystic square of words - the 'sator' square, which in the hands of a blessed practitioner could fend off many forms of evil. The wood itself was from sacred sources. Fenna had a small stockpile, using the chips to leave peace where she walked.

Now she looked down at the ground where the scent of brimstone reached her nostrils and frowned. She didn't dig to examine the psychic damage, knowing better than to risk her own carefully-crafted protections. But the stench carried strong enough in the crisply cold air to tell her that there had been a breach. She shook her head and looked back towards the main street, where the knot of men still huddled close against each other to ensure their words didn't carry.

If she focused, she might hear them anyway. There was no need. She knew what they were about - the hunter had arrived that morning. Rae had been worn down by her pleas and the Father's pleas, and the stinking presence of yet more dead livestock in the wake of the horrific loss of the Jaeger family. And then, as prophesied, a rambler was found gut open at the edge of town. _That_ had caused a ruckus.

Rae was losing weight, obvious in the way his face had sunken in. Rational thought lay quiet as winter approached, and the wrath of God became a weightier thing within men's minds. She shook her head. This was not about _His_ wrath at all. Only the old dark looking for new places to set roots.

The hunter was a good start, anyway, even as it meant she herself must now take greater care to go unseen. Collateral damage - the hunter's ways meant no tolerance for even her small wisdoms. He would burn her out along with whatever corruption hid in the woods beyond the town, if he turned an eye to her.

Fenna sniffed, winter's bite leaving her nose numb and red, and she turned only to find herself all but about to run into the tall man behind her. She gasped, startled, as the figure looked down upon her.

"Ma'am," he said, courteous enough to pass for polite. She smelled _him,_ too, now. Leathers gone raw from hard travel, old must, dirt, and those burnt spices oft used in church thuribles. The last told her who he was. The hunter. Already drawn too close for her immediate comfort. He took a step back and bowed his head, as a gentleman might. He didn't seem to smell the brimstone. Not as she did. "My apologies. I was not meant to startle you. The reverend Father suggested I introduce myself. You were a friend to the Jaegers."

A bit much to put it that way, but she mentally thanked Jannsen for the exaggeration. She had told him she wanted a look at the hunter herself, to gauge his worth here. "Their loss is nigh unbearable." She shook her head and allowed a curtsy, keeping her hands warm and hidden under the fur that was one of her very few extravagances, and still only ones with practical purpose. She blessed the foresight that told her to go the day without the seals upon her hands or wrists. Less safe this season, but with him right before her, a better choice.

"I'm sorry for it." The man tugged off the almost absurdly large leather hat to incline a sleek, dark head still greasy from long-travel. "My name is Hellstrom, ma'am. Damien Hellstrom. I've been retained by the town for security purposes. Come out from the city to help find out what's been rustling your cattle, maybe attacking your good folk."

A solid approach. She pursed her lips approvingly, noting his only mistake to the truth of his nature was the use of the word _what._ "You may call me Fenna, Mr. Hellstrom."

"Not your family name."

"It is not." She looked away, unable to keep that fact from stinging to the bone. "My husband is lost, and it pains me to hear his name. So I go by my first alone for now. It is a strange thing I ask of my acquaintances and friends, but it comforts me to recover in silence." All true enough. It occurred to her to press a little further, angling to distract him with sympathies. "My daughter still carries his name, of course. She is away for schooling."

Hellstrom nodded, seeming to accept that. "We do what we must in the hard times."

She smiled, but only with as much decorum as widowhood would allow her. "That we do." She bowed her head politely. "Did you have questions about the Jaegers?"

"Mostly I don't think there's a need to keep you long. But if you might consent, ma'am, I'd ask for an hour or so of your time. Get a feel for who they might have known and what might have been after their cattle." He looked away as snowflakes began to drift down. "Been a long while since any of the tribes kept around here, but I know rumors of a Shawnee family or three staying rogue in the hills."

He didn't sound like he believed that. Nor would anyone with sense. The first people were indeed long gone now, though a few of her contacts said the legends of Tecumseh and his war had made of him a folk hero already, scant decades after the chieftain's death. She tried to not shift, nor fidget overmuch. A little woman of the new villages wouldn't know all this. She smiled instead, affable and light. "Whatever it is that troubles our town, I am sure we are in good hands, Mr. Hellstrom."

"Does my own tale precede me?" He sounded amused.

She arched an eyebrow, then stretched a hand to indicate the lobby of the small inn. A public place for the pair to talk, avoiding any unseemliness. "I referred to our Lord, of course."

"Of course," he echoed, still amused.

. . .

The hunter's questions were functional and, like his introduction, mostly careful to hide his true purpose. Fenna treated him in kind, the lone widow who went about the village as everyone's friend and confidant. She told him what she could, and that much was the basics of the Jaegers' life of some handful of years as Mr. Rae kept the town afloat. The rest he would know from the men of the village - the awful end, and the corpses lost in the fire. That fact yet disturbed her. But he seemed satisfied with her answers, and left after that promised hour without looking closer at her. Good enough, though she was still a little unsettled by the way he appeared at the hidden line.

Witch hunting was a rare and oft disused tradeskill now, best at work in the newest settlements and left for those without patience or talent for 'real' work such as ranching or trading. Hellstrom looked like a longtimer, however, in his clothes. Maybe he had some actual weight to him. She might have a better look at him sometime, perhaps in his own element. But for now, at least his presence alone might slow down the assault coming from the darkness between the trees.

So she went home for the night, padding soft through the new snow and with an eye kept on the moon as it rose full and silver-bright behind the breaking clouds. The trail to her home at the distant edge of the village was a clean enough one, safe and silent, and that is how she knew to twirl with her hands at her pockets when the sound of snapping branches and footsteps on stones reached her. Fenna said nothing, only swept the close-kept trees with her sharp gaze and with her fingertips brushing her special bible and her salts and other trinkets hidden deep within her petticoats. She found the edge of the one she wanted most, feeling it warm against her skin.

She relaxed on instinct when the woman stepped out of the shadows, and then tightened again, more strongly now. The woman in black took another step, dainty across the snow, and that was when Fenna realized she was leaving no footsteps in the soft drifts. The woman's accent was an old one, touched with a faint English lilt. "Easy, sister. This is a call of courtesy."

Another step out of the shadows and into the moonlight, allowing her to get a better look. Fenna's fingers curled around the silver coin, washed in holy water at a font in Boston five years prior. A seemingly simple token of protection, strong enough to remind her to have confidence against the surprisingly tiny woman in all blacks. "Name yourself."

"And give you power over me?" A light, tinkling laugh. "I will not, but nor will I take offense at the request." A black gloved hand flicked out, and Fenna tried to not wince in self-defense. "Your protections are powerful, little sister. We believe we've smelled you before, at the wintering logging camps to the east, and also at Georgetown." A pale face inclined a full, round cheek towards her under the plain black bonnet. From the back, dark brown hair flowed freely, in defiance of social norms. It made it clear the sedate clothing she wore was a mockery. "How well will those rivers flow, and for how long? We see a future there, where darkness gathers atop high steps and casts down the tortured priest. You delay, sister. You cannot stop the dark."

"A compliment, and then you toss what I am aside. Yes, you see my works for the Lord where I've been." Fenna felt the coin burn hot now between her fingers. "What do you want from this meeting?"

"Want? I come to give, freely. I will give you a choice, and then I will give you a warning." The woman in black stepped onto the path, blocking Fenna's view of the rest of town with a broad skirt. Under it, she could hear scales rattle. Blackened silver and slithering skin. "You can leave, little sister of that fallen Christ-child. We will permit this. It is not our way to hunt our own kind until else fails-"

"I am not of _your_ kind!"

The woman looked amused, red lips pursing and then showing white teeth. "They will burn you the same as us should they think to fear you, and your flesh will resist the snare. Same as us. You pledged to different Gods, although I am sure, sister, next you will say there is but the one. Consider it said already. But to the rest of my words - Leave, sister. Or know that you have a place with us. Our number is sacred… but numbers can change."

"And if I should choose neither?" Fenna felt a razor coldness worm its way between the laces of her dress. Witches, then, pressing against the township. Old witches of old woods, and of an unknown number. Strong enough to ignore her boundaries. Strong enough to approach her without fear. She had never faced one in the flesh, only disarmed old traps left behind. But her own mother had known the way of such war, and may well have died for it. To this day, she didn't know.

More than one. She was in real danger. The temptation was first to flee, but the silver in her fingers tightened her spine.

"There lies your warning. You will die. The hunter will die." The woman - the witch - smiled. "This town will die, slowly, in agony. And then the land beneath it will die, consumed for _our_ coming God. Fire. Brimstone. Hell itself opened to the world, for sweet darkness to gather once again. You can't stop what's coming, sister."

"I have my faith that you're wrong."

The red lips parted in a humorless smile. "And I have my faith that you are mere ash and dust before us. You have until morning to consider, sister. Make preparations to leave then, we will freely spare time so long as you seem to ready your departure. There are too few of us in this world to be unkind to one another. Leave. I ask this with earnestness and respect. But I, on behalf of we, will only ask this the once."

"And the hunter, should I go? And the town?"

The woman turned to go, flourishing a shrug. "What of him? We have _dealt_ with his kind before. What of the town? They are doomed, sister. You cannot save them. Save yourself."

She opened her mouth to say something more, something else defiant and worthy of the cunning-folk that came before her, only to watch the shadowed shape disappear into the trees without a sound. She brought her hands out from her skirts to clasp them together, bare and shaking cold, the coin still pressed hard enough into the skin to emboss it with the secret name of the Lord's most secret angel. She prayed instead, her lips numb and warming only when she found strength in her legs and returned home.

. . .

"In the morning, Fenna went back into town. But not to order a ride on a wagon to the distant plains, nor to the local coal railways that might allow a passenger. She went straight to the priest instead, and planned with him to give what little she'd learned to the new hunter - although under the guise of another's anonymous conference, and with some identifying details changed."

"Clever enough." Loki looked less bored with the interplay of historical magic users than he had with the mysterious death of the cattle. It showed his priorities. "I don't suppose then she went to clear out once the hunter had the information in hand."

Harkness shook her head. "No. And with the witch's warning in mind and the facts of history given to us, we can guess a few things about the outcome of that decision."

"Seven of them in the woods, up to something that could eventually destroy the town. And obviously did," said May. "But Fenna didn't know that then."

"Not then. She found out shortly the next morning, when the warning became a threat - painted out in blood and worse." Harkness looked over his shoulder for a moment, then at both agents in turn. Her voice, still dull and now more than a little worn by her story, managed to half-limp itself into the question. "If your gadgets work, what time is it supposed to be?"

May didn't even have to look. "Should be going on four."

"You don't say." Deadpan.

That made May look back over her shoulder, through the door that had been left open to allow a breeze in. The windows had been sealed. The sky was turning a deep orange, closer to night than physically possible. She made a soft noise, then got up to go check the sun's position. _That_ was correct, with the sun on the western horizon though not yet fully setting - but the light was simply wrong. It was like the region had been veiled by something - and she realized that was very likely the exact cause. She looked back to find Loki's unhappy, examining glance. "She's right. It's changing fast out there."

He turned back to their makeshift circle, muttering under his breath as May stalked back with her usual easy grace. It wasn't a muttering she was meant to understand, she realized. A second later, one of those odd, pretty blue-white magelights was forming in his hand. He flicked it up to hover close to the ceiling, drawing the first look of real, focused interest from Harkness. He caught the look, studying it. "Not familiar with the spell?"

She looked away, closing up.

Loki made a noncommittal noise, glancing again at the notebook Harkness kept close, the dirty protection marks now barely visible on her arms. He leaned back, visibly choosing to not press the topic right then. "Let's chivvy the tale along, then. I expect the Seven's threats to this history's cunning-woman marked a turning point for all involved."

"Yes. It did." Harkness sighed. "They marked the beginning of the end."


	11. Hellraiser

11\. Hellraiser

. . .

It was the Jaegers, once lost and now found. But not in a form where they could be rightfully buried in the name and sight of God. Crows cawed from the trees, offended by carrion they would never dare eat. The flesh had gone wrong. Fenna heard the birdcry from down the trail, knew then something was waiting for her. But not what, not until she came within sight.

Fenna couldn't keep from biting the back of her hand to stifle the scream that wanted to crawl its way out from her belly and slither up along each vertebrae. They hadn't been burned after all; the father, the mother, and their three young children. The mangled remains didn't leave easy clues as to how they _had_ died - scraps of pulp and gore and all the secret internal organs, laying freshly, obscenely pink on the white snow in whorls and in patterns that hurt her eyes. Bones were left in a shapes that were a hateful mockery of language. Words of Hell and Chaos. And painted on her door were not signatures, for they held close their names, but seven sigils to mark her opponents nonetheless. So that she knew what she stood against.

She could feel the heat coming from them, and if she did not cross the bloody remains soon to deal with the curse left behind, they might well alight all the way and consume her house.

At the end of the small path that led from her door to the snowy, tree-speckled field that stood between her and the town, the rancher's head lay lopsided on its torn throat to face her as she returned from Jannsen's morning service. Its jaw hung in a never-ending scream and glazed grey eyes stared her way in eternal accusation.

"They're growing bolder. Staked out a claim and are preparing to move on it. Probably been here making those preparations before the town did." The voice - Hellstrom's unexpected voice - behind her was calm and easy, pitched the right way to not startle her further. She was too shocked to move. "Glad I tracked you from the church, Ms. Fenna. Especially once I saw the crows in the air. Sorry about the circumstances. That's Mr. Jaeger, yes?"

She could barely move her head, her vertebrae like frozen blocks of ice as she shivered her way through the slightest nod. Thirty years of cunning work, nothing like this had crossed her path before. Nothing _ever_ so brutal, nor inhumane as this. Beasts were kinder.

"Please tend to your house, ma'am. I won't interfere." She heard the sound of something rustling, some item being unslung from his shoulder. He kept talking as she took her first step towards her own home, still calm. The part of her deep down that could still function in emergency, the part of her that had coldly tied her husband's wounds closed when his horses spooked and his wagon had upended on him, realized this was his way of trying to help. The same cold, calm thing was in him. Gratitude warmed her enough to make her move more easily, giving her time to wonder what he was doing here, and if he would ultimately be a threat to her. The next ripple of gooseflesh came with his question. "Them protection chits around the town, that your doing?"

The curse _had_ to be handled. There was no point in playing the matter off. She reached out towards the blood sigils painted on her door with one hand, digging for her packets of tools with another, wincing at the way the marks seemed to sear her eyes. The black stars and their sacred letters poked out from under her sleeves, and a moment later sweet herbs filled the cooling air. All was safe again. She turned to look at Hellstrom, curious and more than a little wary.

"If they are, they're good work." Still mild. The thing he'd unslung was a crossbow, now leaned against her makeshift fence. No threat there. A rag was in his hand now instead, and he was bent down and moving the head out of alignment of the black creation that marked her land.

She shook her head, in disbelief and not denial. He had no interest in accusing her of dark witchcraft. That was beyond rare. "I cannot apologize for not telling you the truth, though I know I must pray for my use of a lie."

"Hardly lied, ma'am, and I'm aware of the attitudes of many of my competitors. You do what you must to protect yourself." Another rustle, and another length of fabric appeared from a pouch. With the head effectively 'disarmed,' Hellstrom was able to wrap it away more properly, and with some funereal respect. "Smart enough they came after you first as a threat and not me."

She lost her voice for a moment, struggling to bring it forth. "It was… it was not a threat at first, Mr. Hellstrom."

He nodded, understanding. "The join or die deal. Old story there." He pointed his bent thumb towards her door. "You know those sigils ma'am?"

"I did not recognize them, sir." That much was true. "I did not recognize the woman that approached."

"Can you describe her to me?"

She did, and frowned at the look of recognition on his face. Unsettling man. No fear of the cunning folk. And too much intelligence in the face still calm under a filthy, broad hat. Yes, she'd misjudged this one in the face of all the others; men who hunted for too often harmless women as if they were themselves animals. " _You_ recognize."

"I do, Ms. Fenna." He squared his shoulders back. "My… ancestor came too late to Salem to tell them where they went wrong, that what they wanted was deep in the woods and far older than they knew, and so they did go on to murder their own poor, harmless folk in the name of God. _They_ slipped away as the hangings and the stonings came to an end, and my ancestor, all he heard was seven bells of hell-sung laughter in the night. May, 1693. Slipped the tracking, they did. Never heard a word of 'em since, just rumor and bodies left aside. Only proof I have are the old sketches of the lairs and the works they left behind in the deep woods outside of the town, and that's not enough for most. But I see the same sigils this morning as they left behind. Each to each. The Salem Seven, though that's not quite a right enough name for 'em."

"Your ancestor…" She frowned. Something about his words. They hid not a lie, but a secret. "Sir."

Hellstrom smiled, oddly young and sheepish through thick stubble. He too raised a wrist. But there were no stars of blessed protection there. She saw a scar instead, or a birthmark. An odd pattern, itself almost recognizable. Like something lost in a dream. "Like you, ma'am, I have a few reasons to think on my competitors with some caution." He stuck his hands in the pockets of his rugged coat, still oddly ill at ease. "It's starting again. I wish you had left. Not out of cowardice, or that I think you weak. But because this is going to be a black and awful thing in these next nights. It's got to be ended fast - or _we're_ going to be ended fast. You understand?"

Fenna studied him, calm again, the cold thing dug in deep next to her spine. "Then we best get to work, sir, and find some manner in which we may defend the town." She reached out her hand as if he were an equal, or rather, that she meant herself as one. "Consider this a re-introduction, Mr. Hellstrom."

He grinned as he took it, wry and knowing. "Ma'am."

. . .

"They did what they could by day and with the town watching, overwrought, for something out of place. Hellstrom knew this tension for the same fears and mistrusts that eventually ate so many towns during the height of the witch panic and, knowing that they would look first at Fenna than him, kept them distracted. For her part, Fenna gathered stockpiled supplies, and no few sacred vials of water from the font Jannsen watched over." The corner of Harkness's mouth quirked, like a joke meant for herself. "Jannsen prayed and kept the town council also too busy to peck at their hired hunter. And as they worked, Hellstrom confided what little he knew of the Seven."

Aggie picked up the water bottle May had given her, toying with it instead of looking at the agents. "Seven near-immortal women, 'witches' for lack of a better word, who had given themselves utterly to darkness well before the events in Salem. He believed they may even have been old enough to remember lands that written history itself had forgotten; places and people connected to old magics and something even more vile than what Fenna knew of Hell." She arched her eyebrow as Loki stirred. "And as servants of that dark age, they were granted power to corrupt where they walked, to prepare it for whatever things they called master. By their sigils, Hellstrom knew them. Not names. Concepts of their specialities. The Thorn. The Ghost. The Scream. The Thread. The Snake. The Dreamer. The Fade.

"It was The Dreamer who had come to Fenna with her warnings and threats, almost gentle but also, according to the witch-hunter, the most dangerous. She was the de facto leader, who supposedly held close a secret piece of parchment. Hellstrom knew little about it, except the rumor that it held a name of power." Aggie looked at Loki. "That a scrap of this book, you think?"

"Yes," he said, the single word holding enough dire weight to explain the rest.

She nodded. Then, absurdly, she smiled. A real one. "You know, it's not your fault. I guess they - and people like them - have been everywhere. I don't know that any place in the world would have been safe. Seems they've been preparing for this for a long time. If this book was taken from one keeper, seems to me another was always going to be ready to step up and look for it."

She didn't wait for his reaction before returning to her story. "The first night was a test. As dusk drew close, a cloud of bats blackened the sky over the town, causing the late-evening wanderers to panic and run inside for shelter. At the same time, one of the Seven struck the southernmost edge of the barrier she put up. Just to get her attention - they were powerful enough to not be held back by it. Only their darker servants were kept from the town, though the cunning woman and the witch hunter could hear the demonic noises beginning to gather close in the woods just beyond. But that first night, nothing more."

"Just enough to wear them down a little."

Harkness nodded at his observation. "On the second, silence until after midnight. Then screams. I think we all know what they heard. I think it was very much like what's happening now. Another test of the defenses Fenna put up, while Jannsen held an all-night vigil for the restless town. Oddly quiet, considering."

"On the third night, an obvious mockery of Fenna's faith in her Lord, they found out why. The final showdown came to the fringe of the town, and today we're seeing the bloody aftermath of it."

. . .

The town was silent, frozen in fear. Again, many looked for shelter in the little church, where the exhausted but still faithful priest kept watch over them directly. Dozens prayed in the pews. Jannsen at his podium prayed for Fenna and the hunter. They had gone beyond the town's borders during the day, scouting the fringe of the woods for clues as to what was going to come - and perhaps finding a way to mount an offense on the Seven before night rushed in.

There was no trail to follow. The snow was untouched, eerily so when only just that past spring the deer had run in herds close to the town. The pair had to circle back, hiding their location not far from the town and its protective circle. Fenna's faith was strong, but she also believed that last line of defense was not going to hold out. Not after what Hellstrom had told her.

And again, silence, until the sky was full black. A new moon hid behind heavy clouds, and the air was bitterly cold. Fenna's nose hurt, but still she remained hunkered in the frosty lee of a large stone, hidden by prayer and charm and doing what she could to keep the defenses strong. Hellstrom was ranging close, the heavy crossbow sitting in his hands at all times. Midnight rung out, heralded by Jannsen's distant bell.

As the heavy sound faded, she heard the whistle of a bolt through the air. Followed by a reedy scream - the sound of someone with a pierced lung. As planned, she tensed and waited, watching to see if he returned.

Two minutes became five. She shook her head once, in denial, ready to go and see when the snow crunched under an ordinary-enough foot. Fenna slipped out, and found herself catching Hellstrom as he fell. Her hands fumbled for purchase, losing grip under the heat and slickness. She knew instinctively it was blood, managed to get him to his knees. He did what he could to help, the broad body of his weapon now a crutch as he sagged. "Hellstrom!"

"Trap," he managed. "Laid long ago. No surprise there." He put a hand on her shoulder, still calm and unafraid. Under it, half in shadow, she could see where he had been torn. Not a knife. Not anything sharp, like Jaeger's cattle. He had simply been ripped asunder. His coat, tamped tight against the wound, was holding some of him in. "We were never going to have a chance, ma'am. Not here. Not now."

"Let me get that wrappe-"

"Don't bother. Slow us down." He grimaced. "Get me… back up. Can't win, Fenna. Maybe slow them. Saw where… where she was going. Fade's hard to follow, but I got her scent. She had to get close to open me up, so I bet it all on that. I marked her, too. Got that score." He turned his head away and coughed. Blood landed on the snow, gleaming black in the dark. "We're sacrifices. Not going to lay down easy on that altar, though. Not for them. Not for Hell itself. Not me." Absurdly, he laughed. "Not today."

She couldn't help but grip his arm harder. "Then rest here and I'll go alone." He shook his head, beginning to struggle his way back up with or without her help. "You'll hold me back."

He laughed again, air wheezing audibly through a collapsing lung. "I've been here before, ma'am. Don't fret at me. Let's go… go do what we can."

She tugged him back down, surprisingly strong, proving out that what he wanted, he simply couldn't accomplish. He'd paid too much just to mark a trail. "There is no weakness in this, Mr. Hellstrom. This is not fretting. Let me go see to them alone. I have my faith in the light." He pulled one more time, but it was obvious he was in his last strength. Still, he didn't look afraid. He looked like this was a familiar routine to him. She got the eerie sense it might well be. Secrets. "Tell me how to follow her. You remain here, do what you can. The last line, Damien. Be that. Hold the wall up best you can."

With a mumble, he pressed a medal into her hand. It felt like it burned, reminding her of the coin she kept with her, always. She didn't look down at it, she watched his face go grey in the dark instead. "It'll get cold as you get close." He patted her hand. "I'll remember you."

"Before the grace and judgment of God, perhaps," she said, as she put a hand on his cooling brow. "We do what we can."


	12. Dawn of the Dead

12\. Dawn of the Dead

. . .

There was no plan. She held Hellstrom's crossbow in one hand, all but dragging the heavy device. Fenna had no idea what the medallion she held was really tracking, nor how, but it didn't take long before it began to come alive in her hand to guide her the rest of the way, like an icicle driven through her palm. It reminded her of her silver coin, that scrap of ancient protection she always kept close. She saw the light in the woods, a fire somewhere deep. Too rich and red to be natural. She figured they would be waiting for her, so she readied the crossbow. Some way, some miracle to make the Seven into Six for a little while. That might be enough.

Not a victory. Just a chance to slow them down. Buy the area time before it all went to Hell. Fenna grit her teeth and went towards the witch's fire, knowing she was going to die.

Yes. They waited for her, a small council on stony black thrones. Seven women who watched her silently as she approached. One of them winced slightly as she entered the ring of bloody light, and the medallion in her hand began to cause her pain. She glanced at that one - Fade - and made her face as blank as the sky. Hellstrom had indeed scored some mark against the witch. He'd gone down with black in his ledger against this evil.

"The hunter's dead again then," said one of the others, brightly. Something unnatural shimmered between her hands, strands of pure darklight. Thread. "Maybe he'll stay down this time."

Another tch'd at her while Fenna absorbed and suddenly understood Hellstrom's acceptance of his fate, as bracelets clinked on this other witch's wrist. Twisting thorns, piercing into and through her skin. No blood. No obvious pain. She looked nostalgic. "And deprive us of our fun? I was thinking fire next time. They always smell so good when they burn, men. And that one more than others."

"Service done well is its own reward," said Dreamer, rising up from her seat with languid ease. "It doesn't matter what happens now. The curse has already been laid deep in the earth. With us in place, the ground will sink in time and our kin will feast on the fires that burn within it. Even if we were to be driven out, this is now a known fate. This is _our_ place. Sister, put that weapon down."

Fenna fired it instead, through the fire and towards Dreamer, watching without surprise as she snatched the bolt out of the air and snapped it in two. Only then did she drop the weapon. Her hands came together in prayer next.

"Mm." Dreamer turned towards another of her kin, crooking a finger in a silent order. "Show her what futility looks like. Show her a ghost, my Ghost."

Fenna stiffened her body, trying to be unafraid in her last hour. "I will not be swayed by thy illusions while I serve my faith."

"What illusion?" Ghost smiled, pale lips in a face grey and dead even in the fire's light. The colorless one. She reached down for something in the dark, tossed it towards Fenna in a high, arcing throw. It landed perfectly at her feet. "I give you the truth."

Fenna tried to resist looking at first. She would not be tempted by the tricks of evil. Yet something nagged at her, some new worm in her stomach. One glance, steeling herself for an attack.

They didn't bother. It was over. One bolt, one shot in the dark, and Hellstrom had been right. She went to her knees, unable to stop looking at the pretty little barrette and the strands of dark brown hair still stuck in its clasp.

"Pretty thing, your daughter." Another witch stood. "We grant you this single mercy, little sister, and know this for rare. She died without pain. But you are not permitted to stand against us. Not when our own great lord may see that His return is well prepared. That another land has been readied for Him. Darkness will come here as we finish our work, and darkness will _stay_."

She reached down to cup the fine wood butterfly in her palm. Her husband had found it on one of his rare trips alone. Traded for it, and would not tell her the price. The look of joy on her daughter's face… she realized she was choking on her own breath. She turned to prayer instead. One last prayer, to all the angels and light above.

"Thorn, such simple mortal pain is boring. She's grieved; I've almost forgotten what that looks like. Let her go join her kin so we can return to our own matters. This has been a pointless, if briefly amusing distraction." Dreamer turned away.

A shadow passed over her. All of them could move soundlessly if they chose. It was less than a second before Fenna smelled the undercurrents of blood and cursed flowers on the woman with the bracelets. She looked up into Thorn's face, blurred by her own tears, knowing this was a woman that felt nothing. There was a small knife in the witch's hand.

Fenna's own dropped from her prayer, and dug down fast into her pockets to come up with the silver coin that had passed to her from deep down her mother's line. It laid in her palm, burning hot. The name of the Lord's secret angel seared again into her flesh. Not the name the good rabbis knew in secret, not the priests, not the forgotten books of God himself. It would be a heresy to know this name - for as her mother told her, there were rumors this great angel preceded the Heavenly itself and was bound to Her own trio of great power. But She, that last line of defense, was more than light itself. Mary's own distant mother, said their secret legend - and the mother of all, life born from Her tears.

"What have you there, sister?" Thorn reached down to grab her wrist, then laughed. "And here I thought a knife, or some other final, more amusing trick."

Fenna flexed her wrist, managing to turn the coin over to reveal the name. The laughter died. "In Her name, I die here. For the Lord, and the Light."

"Thorn!" Ghost was again on her feet. "Get-"

"Oshtur, watch my passing." Fenna broke her wrist free and slapped the coin hard against Thorn's face. "I curse your life with my death."

Thorn began to scream, remembering how to be frightened. In a single motion, a knife appeared in her hand and Fenna's throat was cut. Not clean, like she had wanted. This was a desperate animal's slash.

Thorn clawed at her own face where this sacred name of the Vishanti's mother-goddess burnt itself in and wrapped her in light for a second, ignoring the corpse of the cunning woman. A gurgle came from her throat as she staggered away from her victim. She whirled on her six sisters, finding the closest one with eyes that were all too humanly frightened, for the first time in many millennia. Memories boiled through her mind. None of them were _hers_. None of the pain was _hers_ , yet she felt it anyway. They ended with a wooden barrette clasped in her cold hand. She tried to deny what that meant, looked for comfort elsewhere. These were not women made for that. She was given nothing back. "What happened? What did she do to me?"

The Snake recoiled, then turned away.

 _"What did she do?"_

"She took you from us." Dreamer stood, somber. "A blow struck after all. Cunning indeed, I suppose. We are six now, and not Seven. Earn your way back, sister, or in time we will replace you." She sniffed. "And without you, it seems we will have that time. The final stage of our great work here calls for Seven alone. Silly little bitch of the Vishanti. Should have expected that. Like us, they laid their traps as they could. Best move, girl. You'll freeze to death out here. Or your own released pets will come to eat you. They will smell your new weakness."

"Sister, mercy!"

"We have no mercy. We took a sudden blow. I almost _like_ the surprise, I think. We must recover from it. We will return in the years when the land breaks apart and becomes a thing of fire, as is still its fate, and as the Seven restored we will complete our mission." Dreamer didn't look back. "Find your way back to us by then. Remember this promise, or die like the mortal thing you are now. If you do, we will not remember _you_."

The fire went out. There was the human woman who had been ancient Thorn, and a corpse.

Nothing else in the woods of the town. Nothing at all, at first.

In the coming dawn, an owl hooted cautiously.

. . .

"Wait." May paused, absorbing the story. She understood, but she also felt stunned by the new implications. " _Wait_."

Harkness, as asked, waited. The small, odd smile played on her lips.

"You're not the cunning woman's descendent, not as most would guess. The Seven cut off the bloodline of Oshtur's gentle servant with their cruel stunt. Some mercy." Loki leaned back again, turned to examine May's look of honest, outright surprise with an arched eyebrow. "You're Thorn's. Mortal, abruptly abandoned Thorn."

"Aren't I lucky?" Harkness laughed, sarcastic. "Thorn stripped Fenna's body of a few things, went back to town, took up the name, took her things, got the hell out before morning broke all the way. It was easy for her to pack and run, she knew where everything was. She remarried ten years later, out of Philadelphia. Not out of love. A trader named Harkness. A bus ticket out, basically."

"Did she grow a conscience through this?"

"Not really. She wrote a lot of things down, though. Her memories, Fenna's memories, encounters with the remaining Seven. They turned away from her every time. Much of what she wrote is in some sort of code no one's been able to break. Anyway, her old sisters wouldn't even do her the honor of murdering her. She died in London about thirty years after her turn, in the jail she'd been stuck in for eight of them. Tried to kill her daughter to win their favor back. The daughter knew her mother wasn't mad, but also knew this wasn't a legacy she wanted any part of. She took all the books once she knew Thorn was dead and got on the move. That's how it's been since, I was taught. Our little family history, a recent line of daughters - Fenna's curse and Fenna's own lost daughter means that's what we have, of course - who all take promises."

She shrugged. "Harkness women aren't to practice magic more than necessary to survive, and we're supposed to keep an eye out to try to screw up the big plan. I guess in a way we're still Fenna's descendants… just not how you thought." She jammed her thumb towards one of the boarded up windows. "Grandma was born with a touch of foresight, I was told. There was a family theory it's because we're all a lot closer to the ancient bloodlines than we should be. Whatever old magic came from the Seven and their ancestors is still fresh in us, part of why we're supposed to be careful. Temptation. Anyway, she had the idea something was going to happen here again very soon, got the word out before she died overseas. My mom moved to Pennsylvania about thirty years back, moved down to Florida to live in a care home when I said I'd stay and… poof. Here we are."

"And now the witches are back, hence the stirring of the book against my expectations. Their time has come back 'round at last. Much is now explained." Loki nodded, weary and unsurprised. "They think with you, Thorn's replacement, they can be Seven again and finish the job. That's why the demons aren't attacking you directly. Only tormenting. Their idea of courtship, in some mad sense. Join freely, or go mad and be taken."

Aggie laughed, sour and unhappy. "You want the final punchline?"

He watched her, cautious again.

"I didn't actually believe in the family tradition. All the herbs I grew, the horseshoes I'd give to new neighbors… more out of habit than anything else. I thought Grandma was out of her mind, never saw proof any of the history was real. Just a story to make the family sound more interesting. I was humoring my mother with it, went through the witchy goth phase back when it was cool, and for probably the last ten years, none of this had really meant anything to me. Even less, recently." She puffed a sigh, looking tired again. "Until the storm. Until I saw that all the tricks Mom drilled into me could _work_."

May glanced up at the new magelight, remembering a few things about situations like this. "Foxholes have a way of making believers."

"That's one way to put it." Harkness shrugged. She glanced up at the handful of off-limits water bottles she still had lined up on the old bureau. She knuckled a finger towards them, turning wry. "1.2 million Catholics can't be all wrong. That's an 80/20 shitty vodka and holy water mix."

May found herself with a smirk. "Holy hand grenades."

"More like Hail Mary Molotov, to be honest."

That got a tiny but audible snort out of the normally stoic May, pulling a faint grin from the witch.

Loki took this in with a bit more dry consideration. "Used a few already, we saw."

"Yeah, hey, they're not exactly accurate, but the locals don't like them. Good enough. Limited supply, though, as you can see."

"And the notebook you keep close?" He watched as she looked down at it, fussing with the edges of the pages again. He put out a hand. Reluctantly, she opened it to a well-worn page and passed it over, keeping her face downcast as he flipped it open. One black eyebrow arched in surprise. May leaned over to look at what seemed like a mix of physics equations and those odd runic sigils. "Well," he said. "In your defense, I would say magic's been rather necessary to survive." He saw May looking and tapped a fingernail against one of the segments. Then he looked at Harkness. "Small stabilizing spell. Negates the physical properties of the water in those bottles so the alcohol ignites without difficulty. Beginner magic. But quite reliable."

She shrugged, looking rueful. He continued to flip through, noting the organization and margin notes on the handfuls of basic rituals and spellwork that filled the rest of the pages. "All these are culled from your ancestor's notes?"

"Few other sources from over the last century. I… never got them to work before. Part of why I didn't believe."

"You likely didn't need them to. _Will_ is an under-discussed but critical component of magic." Loki closed the notebook and passed it back to Harkness, who took it with a darkening expression. "You have a counter-argument?"

"I've needed it before. Still didn't work." The stressed dullness was back in her voice, but with an undertone of real heat.

"That's not quite what I meant." He said it gently, capable of recognizing that the same unstable ground of Centralia was hidden in her tension. "And for certain dire circumstances, you need more than cantrips. Like this one."

"You said there might be a rescue coming." Harkness still didn't look up, and she didn't sound mollified by his expanded comment. "Delayed, but coming."

"An arrogant but effective sorcerer of my dismayed acquaintance." He ignored May's rude noise. "One directly in league with those resources your Fenna herself was bound to. Having heard your tale, I'm now under the impression that sheltering in place is probably not the best idea after all. The defenses I presume are in existence are going to be much more formidable than I had initially assumed - and I assumed the deeply awful. They will be _specifically_ prepared for him."

"Then I guess I do have a counter-argument, for this part." Harkness reached up and started pulling down her bottles again, shoving them into her pack. "Go in before it gets even worse and try to blow a hole in their defenses. Make it easier for your buddy to crack through."

"I already don't like it." Loki kept the statement mild. "Which means little in this context. What's to like?"

Aggie snorted. "We might not have to take out the book, or the sisters. Just need to get in close enough to see what sort of rituals they've built up and look for a weakness there. Almost two hundred years, and they're not at full strength. It's something."

"But they could become so. Very quickly." The mildness in his voice gained a cooler undertone. It put an edge on May, seeing this possibly coming to a subtle fight. "Going further in with exactly what and who they want is a gamble, and I mislike gambling. Deeply."

"And sheltering in place isn't going to work, flat out," said May, cutting off the possible conflict and aligning herself with what was necessary. Always. "Marching in and helping to dig our escape route is pretty much it. I believe you both. Meanwhile, Strange is already in play. How do we mitigate the risks in going to help him out from our end?"

"Oh, hey, that's easy." Harkness zipped up the bag, looking at May with that same eerie calm she'd had at their first meeting. It put a ripple down the agent's back. "I look like I'm going to turn into the Wicked Witch of the West, get me in the head with your shotgun. Cuts that problem right off."

Both agents took that in with silence.

"If that's what it comes to, I won't care." She shrugged and tugged the strap over her shoulder, mussing the black marks there even further. She looked ready to leave. "Better to worry about the sisters and their plan than what happens to me."

May remained still as Loki stirred and rose as if to block Aggie. He was still arguing. "And better we wait for what weak morning is left to come. Regardless of the oddity in the sky, time is still passing. We wait for dawn, even if the sun is yet veiled."

The witch hesitated, but didn't continue to fight him. Meanwhile, May continued to calculate certain issues in silence, looking at the threat and risk assessments to come and finding it all troubling. No doubt Loki saw some of the new problems she'd just realized, but there wasn't yet a clear moment to discuss them tactically with him. She was going to have to hope he didn't make it worse somehow.

Aggie Harkness wasn't only undergoing obvious traumatic stress from current events and the realization that her family's history was not just real, but had immediate consequences. Her calm wasn't pragmatic serenity.

For some reason, she'd started this horror out on the far edge of _suicidal_.


	13. Prince of Darkness

13\. Prince of Darkness

. . .

Loki rose, graceful and silent, as faint gleams of orange light thieved their way in through the cracks of the old wooden door. The two women were still asleep; Aggie finally exhausted enough by the offloading of her tale to close her eyes not long after, and May forever pragmatic about her own safety and needs. Better to let them both get what rest they could, while they could. The light was not going to grow any stronger than it was now, not until the seal upon the area was breached.

One way or another. He tried to not think about the _other_. Instead the back of his mind worked on theories and scenarios more hopeful to their survival. It galled him, but they were right. The only way out was through.

The door to the rickety home opened with a wave of his hand, the gesture also muffling the rusted hinges and loose knob with a whisper of magic. He slipped out onto the deck, moving light to not creak the wood, and stepped down to the ground with his eyes closed to spread his senses as far as they could reach.

In his mind's reconstruction, Loki _felt_ the fortified ring of light that kept them safe rather than saw it. Beyond it was a darkness that made the new morning nothing more than a seductive lie. There was no safety in this soft dawn, not beyond the barrier. He wrinkled his nose, smelling the acrid tang of demon flesh faint on the air, and feeling the thrum of even crueler things worming through the dirt and ash and destruction beneath his feet. Heat shimmered through it all - no longer only the unusually warm fall but as if the cracks of Centralia were growing hotter and deeper with new portent. Yes, this was _their_ territory now - and he and the other two were being welcomed not as guests, but as trophies to be collected.

Loki opened his eyes and shoved his hands in the pockets of the fine suit he had come to the state wearing. Then he frowned in consideration and decided this was going to be a more casual and quite possibly blood-soaked sort of day instead. He took one hand back out to pat at the pocket of the comfortably black hoodie laid over the equally black tee that he'd shifted into, making sure that the wallet with his technically fake but also legal SHIELD credentials had remained there through the transformation, and then resumed staring balefully at the trees as if a demon might walk out for a hearty early morning fight right then and there.

He was vaguely surprised one didn't, but a pine tree shivered as he watched, just to make sure he knew they were staring right back. Loki resisted the urge to sneer. Mood aside, there wasn't much gained in taunting demons unnecessarily. They kept their own ledgers, and he no doubt owed enough blood to their kind, by their accounting.

 _Now_ there's _one debt I'll cheerfully default on,_ he thought, still watching the trees and taking mental notes on what path might be most navigable. Not safe, of course. But open enough for traverse deeper into the overgrown ruins. _The book and its new keepers can attempt to lay claim to all the pounds of flesh they like, and I'll not give up a scrap of fingernail, come to it. Nor will they have Miss May, nor the witch._

 _Not this time, you raggedy lump of parchments. You and I have got each other well marked._

Despite himself, a flash of sharp teeth peeked through a gritted jaw.

 _I don't make the same mistake twice. I don't forget. Not for stakes like these. We're prepared for each other this time, aren't we?_

Wood creaked softly behind him, someone moving almost as carefully as he could. He didn't have to look to see. "Agent May."

"Not bothering with a 'good morning'?"

He jerked his chin towards the trees. "Perhaps tomorrow, should we be lucky enough to get out of here that quick."

She came up beside him, already alert and now just as soundless on the dead grass. He had respected her for her ability even when he was still their cautious enemy. It struck him he was not just a little relieved that it had been _her_ stuck on this job with him, and not some random minion. Melinda May would not waver. There were still demon teeth scattered on cursed ground to prove that, and no doubt she would calmly add to her score by the day and night's end. "How's the terrain, by your read?"

Loki caught the undertone. "Unstable, admittedly. Clear enough for what needs to be done. Beyond that, we have no guarantees." He looked down at her, seeing much the same grim expression as she looked at the darkened trees. "This is not a time for false hopes."

"Any real ones, though?"

He caught the quick look she gave him, the other question being asked here. Same as last night, when he couldn't have answered without alerting the subject. _Do you think Harkness is already compromised somehow by the Darkhold?_ He shifted his weight, considered his phrasing. "We have our clear and ready minds. That's more than I had, last time. It's something."

May's lips tightened, her way of registering slight surprise. No, he didn't think Harkness's mind had already been tainted by the Darkhold. Not yet. As to _why_ , he had a few theories. None had any evidence. The dominant one, well. He had firsthand experience. But in any case, it was like the woman herself had said - this method could actually be worse for her sense of safety. "How do we keep it that way?"

"Short of the obvious and currently inapplicable method of being on a different continent entirely?" He chuckled, genuine and a little wry. He pitched his voice lower to offer that competing theory, the words carried on something less than a whisper. "They're trying to break her, these things, and she came into the woods cracking and tired. Break her, and consume her free will. Twist her into their purpose. A technical victory, one that does not alter the balance of such things. Our job, then, is to see she doesn't succumb." He arched an eyebrow, ironic as he looked down at her. "Fortunately, I'm known galaxy-wide for my skills as a counselor."

"We're dead." Her response was coldly deadpan.

"She _jokes_. My Gods and distant stars, after all these years, I see it proven true again. Romanoff was right, you _did_ secretly grow a sense of humor." He laughed, soundless and real. "How fare your social skills in these matters?"

"We're still dead." The chill in her voice warmed slightly. She had been and was in fact still joking, in her own way. "Optimized the team for demon killing, not so much the people skills."

"Ah, well." He shrugged, still amused, his shoulders moving light and fast under comfortable cotton. "We'll adapt best we can. Meanwhile…"

"Kick demons in the ass and keep moving."

"Exactly so."

. . .

"Here's the rules as we move - and by _rule_ , I mean this not as a command but as protective guidance. First, remain within ten feet of me at all times. The light you're going to see following us is a visual indicator of approximate safe range, but listen for me to tell you if something's about to change."

Loki shifted the joined bags on his shoulder as he talked, not noticing their weight. With a wave, the mobile orb of light dropped from his palm and began to lazily circle around him in a spiral, like a cat might. Shards of dead grass gleamed almost alive as it passed. "Second, I'm taking heed of what you've said, Harkness. Some of our opponents _want_ visual contact, for such dark work as is at their disposal. Keep your eyes on the path as it lights, on each other, and on anything else but the faces of what's to come out of the trees to play with us. And they _will_ be coming. Third, where I state the obvious with apologies, watch your field of fire. They are going to try to manipulate our senses as we strike back, and demons are, in my experience, painfully good at it. I'm relatively bulletproof. Neither of you are. This is a time for extra caution."

May nodded once, not taking any of it as being talked down to. She was busy thinking about that briefly discussed experience of being in the open field with demons before. Useful knowledge here, but she realized it also made her pause. There was always more to the world than was known, and she didn't know how she felt about some of it. "We have a route?"

"Harkness, this is your territory. _Inward_ is good for starts, but we could do with a formal target if you've a notion where to look. Where would you suspect the center of our issue is? Once we've scouted that, we can calculate a possible exit strategy."

Aggie flicked a glance at each of them, the dim light of the sky making her cheeks look shadowed and hungry. Sleep had been a benefit to her, but not enough of a one. "There's only one original building that's still standing that far in, and whatever else they've got going on in there, no way they're passing up the optics or the symbolism. It's just on the other side of the town proper, up on the hillside." She smiled, thinly pressed lips looking almost ghoulishly tense. "The old church. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

That gave Loki visible pause. That _was_ an awful lot of symbolism to be deconstructed, even for demonic presences that specialized in that sort of thing. He thought of Fenna's story, with her unshakeable faith in angelic light and the matrilineal nature of the hidden Goddess of the sacred Vishanti trio she'd actually been in league with. The boundaries blended here. The Salem Seven's heretical joke was obvious. It almost offended _him,_ who maintained a cautious respect for Strange's patron deities. "You jest."

Harkness shrugged, not looking happy. "It's an old Greek-Orthodox place, not a rebuild of Jannsen's church, at least. But anyway, yeah, the Sisters are probably taking a dump on modern faith and Oshtur's legacy all at once. It's kind of their style."

"Florid way to put it."

"Good news, though. If you can get us safely into that side of town, we can find streets that are still relatively intact. There was a ceremony there just a couple months ago that went off without a hitch, so the land's probably stable."

"Bad news," interjected May. "Roads have no cover." She looked up at Loki, who was arching an eyebrow at her to state the obvious. Cover wasn't going to matter, not here. "It's a reflex. I like having the tactical option."

"Mm." He let that go and glanced at the sky instead. Their few working devices suggested it hadn't even gone past nine in the morning yet. The haze made it appear as if dusk was already rushing towards them again, Centralia becoming a black hole in the world. A sudden hook of worry dug in - what if by some awful curse, Strange _hadn't_ noticed what was going on?

Loki shoved the notion away forcefully. Strange was annoying and arrogant, but he was also competent. That much did not need his silent fears. He allowed a small exhale, then gestured. The only way out was forward. "Let's make tracks in that direction, then. Get a look at what familiar flavor of Hel holds us within."

. . .

Doctor Stephen Strange paced around the seemingly holographic projection that floated above the small conference table bolted to the sturdy flooring of the plane. A gloved hand snapped out, shifting the hazy dome and the faded outline of the woods and ruined landscape underneath, proving it to be one of the sorcerer's own illusions and not technology. At his command, the lines of the mystic map flared a brilliant orange, casting a glow onto his face and highlighting his obvious irritation with their shadows. "Third set of drones captured nothing new, of course."

Fitz sounded dour. "Nope." He pointed at the map with a stylus from his tablet, glancing between the sorcerer and the Director. "That's what, then, some sort of aura reading of the area?"

Strange spread his hands to examine what he'd managed to extract of the runic patterning buried within the seal on the area. His notes overlaid the rest, written in a different coded script. His voice stayed distracted as he tried to match the Darkhold's spell in place with a possible counterpart in the blessed book in his own possession. Nothing quite fit. "Close. I applied an etheric overlay to your archived data, and also used a healthy dose of geological information from the Google Maps app on my phone to shore it up."

Coulson went blank at that.

Fitz nodded along, oddly used to the mix of magic and mundane on display by this point. "Well. I've still been working on approaching it from a scientific level, mostly because what the hell else can I do?" He grimaced. "There's an almost trackable kind of resonance that I can scan for a break in the pattern, but when I tried to put it through the speakers even on a filter to get some clearer readings, it killed the rat I had next to the monitor. We learned from the last time we were, um, close to the book. Was hoping it wouldn't have that kind of effect, but… well, luckily I thought ahead, had plugs in my ears. No one else affected."

"Probably best to not continue that experiment, then." Strange didn't look at Fitz. "The resonance is the dark words of the book, audible contagion designed to buttress the sealing spell and another structure meant to keep us out." He paused, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. "A bit like an EMP, only with Swedish death metal lyrics."

Coulson's eyebrows tried to crawl all the way up his forehead, not expecting _that_ comparison. Worse, it almost made sense. "Yeah?"

"People keep sending me CDs with Giger album art, I don't know why. Some of the bands are even somewhat decent." Strange stepped back from his display, reaching up to stroke a line of dark goatee where it followed his jaw. "Never anything actually unholy there, however." Something about that finally prompted him to examine the engineer, his expression somber. "My condolences on the death. It would not have been a pleasant exit for the poor creature."

Fitz, who had watched the small white rat seize up, tremble, and die within the course of a minute, winced at the accuracy of the statement.

"Okay." Coulson stepped towards the table, wondering where in the mess of trees and the almost eldritch way the cracks in the earth cross-crossed his team actually was. Still safe, he hoped. Regardless of his confidence in both May and Loki, it was hard to not worry. "You're building to the bad news. Cough it up, then we'll go from there."

"Very well. There are two barriers in play, one nested more strongly within the other. I can chisel a path through the outer one within the day handily enough, and that one grants access to Ashland and whatever civilians have survived there. Your scant handful of previous updates indicated that's a hopeful scenario." Strange cocked his head, turning dour. "However, the inner dome is _markedly_ strengthened and specifically designed to be, well, anti-Vishanti defensive measures. There _is_ good news to match." He looked abruptly grouchy.

The expression perked Coulson up with its very familiar anti-Loki obviousness. It made for the clear answer. "Our team is fully aware and will be working on that angle. So hopefully you get a crack opening up to make your job easier."

Strange's half-alive red cloak fluttered as he stepped back and dropped unceremoniously into a chair. "How long can the plane stay in the air to monitor this event?"

"This baby measures flight-time in weeks, Doc, not days." Phil was unable to keep some of the pride out of his voice. The Zephyr was still the cutting edge of SHIELD technology, and an even more comfortable ride than the old Globemaster to boot.

It better be. Once the changeover happened, Phil was expecting to pretty much live in the damn thing.

"Well, we'd best hope it doesn't come to that. They don't have weeks in there. They don't even have scant days." Strange flicked a hand at the dome, brightening the runes to underline his point. "The seal is strengthening at an exponential pace. Soon the book will have total dominion over the region. When it does, nothing of this mundane world can stand against it and its whispers - and most mortal life within is going to go the way of Fitz's late rat."

Fitz shivered again while Coulson went silent. The engineer was unable to stop the gooseflesh from running almost all the way up to his shoulders. Frankly, to him it looked as if the critter had been simply scared to death. The concept of that happening to a human mind was horrific. The book's actions the _last_ time had been awful enough; the sight of mere 'words' on a page strong enough to trap an exhausted alien demigod and goad him into speaking a spell apocalyptic enough to tear through reality on its maker's behalf. He found himself piping up, trying to put hope back into the room. "That's not gonna happen. Not with May and Loki in there. We're going to see that crack sooner rather than later."

It was several seconds before the small, dry smile began to filter its way through Strange's facial hair. " _His_ ego alone would never stand for the dire outcome."

Coulson whiffed his good hand through the air above Strange's map, feeling the way it made his skin tingle. Fitz's confidence in the pair on the ground added to his, and drove him to needle Strange almost cheerfully. "You guys adore each other, knock it off and admit it."

The long, sour snort from the aquiline nose meant it was a direct hit. "I'm going to turn all of your hidden candy bars into particleboard."

Phil grinned, making the man's expression darken further. Worth it. Then he turned all-business again. "Meanwhile, I'm going to put together a couple teams. I want us to get into that town and start pulling them out ASAP."

Strange was still unamused by his needling, but nodded clinically at what amounted to a direct order.


	14. Nightbreed

14\. Nightbreed

. . .

Agent May dropped another shell into the black SHIELD-issue shotgun with the grace of a craftsman, using the trail of light from Loki's almost frantic little ball of magic to mark her target without looking it in whatever might pass for its eye. She took a deep inhale to steady herself, using the half-second to make damn sure Harkness was still on her other side, popped up the business end in what for anyone else would have been blind aim, and then unloaded it on some grey, mewling thing with feet that looked like they were dripping sickly blood into the ground as it walked.

She stepped back as it shuddered, letting Loki finish it off with a snapped word and a lick of green fire. She would have already had her second target, but Harkness was flipping one of her few remaining Molotovs onto it and its apparently conjoined lump of flailing tentacles. May glanced at the oil slick its burning flesh left behind, adjusting position as Loki kept them moving towards high ground and picking another demon to pop as she moved. The terrain coming up wasn't a guarantee of safety, but a promise of a little more light on their side as they kept moving further into the hellspiral that the ruined town had become.

As they moved away from the cabin, heading north, the landscape had begun to show signs of change. While it was obvious the fiery cracks in the earth were unstable and dangerous to human life, the region beyond had still shown lush life hidden under the threat of its ash - not unlike the tangling wilderness that had swallowed Pripyat, the town lost under Chernobyl's shadow. Here now, moving deeper into the oppressive presence of the Darkhold, color was leeching from the dirt and the trees had become skeletal and unwelcoming. No insects hummed in the dark, save for a handful of black roachlike things that had never been in a human's book of etymology, whose own fricative noises were unsettlingly like the hoarse whispers of promise in a suicide's ear.

"We're being tested," said Harkness, rummaging in her pack for what turned out to be a small handgun. She dumped it back in with a grunt and got another Molotov instead. "Want to know how much energy you're willing to put out to defend yourselves."

"No, really," snapped Loki, irritated not with her but with what seemed to be a phalanx of five fast-approaching and seemingly inside out small hogs with razors along their necks and growths along their splintered hooves. They were chasing after the ball of light, fast and just powerful enough to dodge around the edge of his invisible barrier, creatures specifically and hastily designed to snuff it out and make his life that little bit more difficult. Just to underline his answer to the question, he caught them in a short wall of ice, and then exploded them with a few more snapped words a second later.

The untouched magelight rolled on, brightening as if almost happier now. It didn't seem to cheer him much, however.

"You alright?" May asked the question while reloading again. She figured he was, but she wanted a gauge on his tension. Harkness was right. Given an opportunity, the two agents would be torn apart. What would happen to Harkness was a darker mystery.

"Could do this all day. Might have to. It works out, really." Loki snarled another short set of arcane words, using the scorched terrain against something crawling towards them with at least twenty spindly, centipede-like limbs. The curse upended it, and already unbalanced, it tumbled back down the hill towards the gap in the earth where it had emerged. "I'm having _fun_ working out some lingering irritation with my old friend, let's say." He grimaced, remembering the way the demons had managed to echo his own long ago memories. Fingers curled in like claws, freshly tense.

May kept up with him as the current assault slacked off, making sure Harkness was also on pace. "This is a new batch, following the wind our way. There's also been a consistent group tailing us since we left the cabin, but it's not them striking. Either of you got any idea why?"

"Just as she says. Part of the test. These ones are disposable, nearly mindless. The ones you've been tracking, that's the real threat thus far. They'll have a greater semblance of tactical thinking. They're _waiting_."

The way he said it put a ripple along May's arms. She ignored the sensation, buried her own growing nerviness, and did a fast field check on the shotgun as they kept moving. She dug into one of the bags on her shoulder, grabbing two extra clips for the handgun holstered at her hip, still waiting for its turn. The last thing she wanted was to be caught out when their pursuers did jump.

Harkness, as ever, said nothing.

. . .

They could feel the change in the air as they marched deeper into the overgrowth that hid torn out foundations and shattered roads. Ash seemed to hang suspended in dead air, flickering a shiny black against the almost full-dark that surrounded them. Eerie silence was punctuated by dry branches snapping as they moved, and the soft crunch of dead foliage. The assault hadn't come again, ratcheting Loki's almost tangible tension up further. It was the enemy he couldn't see nor predict he hated the most, come to it. Like May, the tactical field was what he preferred to fight in, in contradiction to the chaos he liked to inflict.

May elbowed Harkness, gently. "How much further to the church?"

"Maybe a mile, mile and a half. We should be able to see it break the skyline soon. We're coming up to the edge of the oldest part of town."

"Anything else left standing there? Some walls, a basement, anything?"

"No, the cracks are actually going to get worse as we approach. The mine seams run close through there, old Rae's territory. The stuff that went bad first over the years, just as the Seven wanted." May could barely see Harkness frown in the gloom. "It'll open up again closer to the structure, but since that's not exactly good news, it's only going to be hard road from here."

"Terrific. Loki?"

"My senses have functionally gone dead." He sounded frustrated, the words themselves prickling through the air. "Our pursuers are very close, and they're being granted shadows."

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means they're going to to take their best shot at scattering us very damned soon, and I won't be able to predi-" He cut himself off and swung around, green light flickering along his profile. "Or rather, let's say right damned _now_."

Still nothing came crashing out towards them, as if trying to prove him a liar. Instead there rose a new, oppressive aura, like being crushed beneath an invisible beast. Breathing came shallow for the trio under it, even for May who forced herself into her careful, almost meditative warrior's stance instead of giving in to a fear that tried to force its way through her pores. The shotgun was ready in her hands.

And then, bizarrely, the forest around lit up like day. Shards of unnatural, broken light gleamed off the frozen ash, forcing them to look away from the core of it, the trio almost stunned by the assault. Loki was already trying to shout down the strange attack with some new spell of his own, but it wasn't enough to keep it from accomplishing what it wanted. The light danced around them, drowning out the magelight, forcing them to instinctively look away into the trap the demons had designed. A simple plan. Easy enough for a half-clever demon, potentially devastating from a smart one.

The mirror-fiend spread its arms as if welcoming the three as the light shattered into grey glass, forcing each of them to look into it, and so it looked back into them. It dug itself in deep, cold talons of pure mental energy reaching into brain matter and stealing what it could to make them suffer.

May tried to resist, ready to pump a double barrel load into the creature before it could plant itself further into her mind, but it was too quick, too trained for this sort of dark work. She faltered, froze for a half second as Andrew stepped towards her. Lost Andrew, who had really died when he succumbed to the Inhuman self that he'd tried to hide from everyone. His actual death, his sacrifice to slow down the nearly godlike thing named Hive, had been a footnote, the sealing of a door on a home she had already tried to forget and still dreamed of.

"May," he said in his low, sweet voice. Human now, only human, in one of those nice blue button-up shirts he liked, cuffs folded up to the elbows. He grinned, like he had when they were trying for a baby. Better times. A living marriage, a life painted in colors and scents and not full of the tinnitus hum of battle. All of those years gone. She didn't blame the Inhumans any longer, but there was still pain here. Some of it, she blamed herself. The demon found it, wanted to pull it all out into the hellish mockery of light.

 _No,_ she mouthed, but she was unable to move at first. She had to try to tear her gaze away, not give in to the illusion. It was _powerful_ , reinforcing itself on the sudden surge of her memories. Her body was her domain. The mind was a place where there would be constant struggle throughout a life, and the thing clawing to gain control inside her knew that. As he stepped forward towards her, she could smell him. His old cologne, his favorite, with that little bit of musk. It made him seem real, causing the shotgun to waver in her hands and start to droop. She hadn't been able to save him. _No._

Harkness had sunk to her knees, dead white. May blinked, trying to shove herself back from the shade the mirror-fiend had wrapped itself in. Tried to shut herself down, look for safety in anger and in her training. The constant refuge. Her discipline was just strong enough to win her that much wiggle room. For a split-second she thought she saw its true form before Harkness, a corpse-like man with a bloated face, before realizing that didn't fit either. She managed to get the shotgun back up, knowing that was barely going to pause a thing powerful enough to affect them all like this, hoping she wasn't going to have try and to stop it alone.

She didn't have to.

Loki broke the spell a second later with a roar of raw, affronted, almost primal fury, a sound that May had never heard before from him. It would have fit his warrior brother better than this leaner sorcerer, but the glowing crater that replaced whatever illusion that had tried to grab hold of his mind was a sharp reminder of his particular set of skills. She hadn't been able to steal much of a glance at what had tried to approach him, just the flow of almost liquid gold and the oddly deep wound in Loki's roaring voice.

The dark returned, as if a bulb had been smashed. Unlikely their tracking force had expected _that_ much of a reprisal from the alien. Harkness breathed shallowly in the new silence, almost fully retreated into some sort of shaking breakdown. May got her own mental footing back and dropped to check on Harkness, grabbing at her arms and trying to get a look at her face. She glanced up at Loki's when he approached, pausing again at the violence etched deep there. She was not about to ask what _he'd_ seen when the thing tried to root through his most emotional memories - but whatever the demon had tried on him, it had obviously caused the exact opposite effect it had desired and insulted the utter living hell out of him instead.

He gave no real hints, just one vague one. "Won't try that one again, I expect," he grated, his throat briefly torn and bruised by the sheer awfulness of the sound that had poured out of him. "I owe the Mistress one of those horrifying pizzas she's decided she likes."

"How many dimensions did you drop-kick it through?"

Somehow that got a fleeting, faint smile back on his face, warmed a little by the magelight that rushed back around them and gleamed its way into restored power. "Least three, I wager. Its companions have pulled back. We have a _very_ short moment in which to breathe. Best take it."

May looked back at Harkness, realizing she wasn't comforted by that news. The dead, slack look of pure shellshock was back. It was possible they'd gotten what they wanted, after all. "Harkness?"

Aggie's eyes closed and she pulled roughly away from May's grasp. She put it together with the pastor's words. The lost husband. Suicide. Like her, Aggie had gotten a painful, all too real and recent flashback. She reached out and grabbed her arm again, hard enough to keep the witch from pulling away this time. "Harkness, it's gone. They're gone."

She shook her head. "They're never gone."

May looked up at Loki, staring stonily down at the pair. "We need to keep moving," she said, not sure how else to pull Aggie out of this. "We need to-"

"Do you wish to live or no?" Loki loomed over Harkness, the words blunt, the tone sharp enough to slice. "Both outcomes have their hurts. All of it has costs. If you wish to give up, well, it won't be you it costs from here, but it's an understandable choice. Let me know, if you would. We need to get moving, either way."

May's hand unconsciously tightened. What the _hell_ did he think he was doing?

Aggie flinched, staring hot back at him. "You have no id-"

"Don't I? You don't know me. It was him, you saw. The dead husband. The suic-"

Her turn to cut him off, practically howling it into the dark. "I killed him!"

May, stunned, almost let go.

"Don't you get it? I couldn't do _anything_ to help him. Nothing ever changed. The medication they had him on, it couldn't help his mind. I couldn't help him. I tried, and I failed him." Ragged breath, nearly hyperventilating. "You ever find someone that's hung themselves? Do you know what they look like?" Each new word was a wail, spiraling up like smoke from a bonfire. "I couldn't do anything. Magic saves nothing. It didn't work. I failed. Everything was _bullshit_."

May got it in a flash. Guilt. That was what the mirror-fiend had actually hooked into. Pulled out of them, like overspilling intestines. She couldn't save Andrew. Loki had someone he hadn't been able to rescue, some old scar that moved him. And Harkness… Harkness hadn't been able to pull her husband out of suicidal depression, and had wound up finding his body when he couldn't take it anymore. That's what she had walked into the woods carrying. May thought of the bloated neck of the demon, that glimpse her own defiance had stolen. Yeah, she knew what a hanged man looked like. That hadn't been the first for her, but it clearly had been the first for Aggie.

The demons wanted to find a break, some method of pushing Thorn's descendant into a self-destructive madness that they could use to make her willingly accept a place among the Seven. Well. _That_ would about do it, if unchecked.

Loki hunkered down, still staring coldly at Harkness. "And yet, come to the fire's rise, you saved a small portion of a village that hated you, that threw you out for doing it, and they still survive. That's the other side of failure, you know - surviving it. You couldn't save your mate. That hurts in a way which has few effective words to describe even its borders. I have some _understanding_ here, though the nature of it is none of your business. Now, what you can do next, is lift a damned finger and try to save yourself. That, also, I have some understanding of. If you want any sort of peace from what you perceive as your guilts, you won't find it in death. I promise you this. You certainly won't find it as the book's victim, a thrall to this coven of mad sisters. But I can't stop you from giving up, neither. So what is it going to be?"

Harkness trembled, stuck somewhere between fury and despair.

He continued, merciless. "I have a dome to crack, a church to raze, a book to see launched into the sun, Gods willing, and then I intend to return to my quarters and absolutely murder a bottle of Muspelheim fire-rye I've hidden away for just these sorts of awful occasions. All you're doing is adjusting the timeline I've in mind. _I_ intend to move forward. That's my choice. What's yours? Can we get to it promptly, or are you going to make this difficult?"

"You are a bastard." Harkness fixed on him, alive and alert.

"I am an effective bastard, and I've survived." Loki straightened up in a single, smooth motion. "You want comfort? Need to hear if it gets better? It does. Slowly. In hard time. Sometimes you won't think it's worth it. But I'm not sitting abouts here while you weigh it out. We can't. Pick one."

Aggie tore her arm away from May, color flushing hot in her face. But she got up. May still stared at Loki, not sure he'd chosen the right method with her. Sure as _hell_ he was no counselor. He glanced back, mild again but also leaving everything else unreadable, then towards the path they had been trying to navigate. Towards the center of the corruption. "There's something worse coming. You both know it. We're not going to get within range and find a simple solution to our problem, sneak out the back. Never works like that."

He was right on that. May had been braced for it since leaving the house. "What's your guess?" She resettled her pack as she waited for the answer, watching as Harkness silently did the same.

"Goal was to avoid the church and its awakened cargo if possible, but if they're smart enough to play games like this for what they want, they're smart enough to layer traps within more traps." He looked back at the pair, half his face in darkness as the magelight trailed past him. "They're going to have rooted this dome of corruption right under the godsdamned book itself, like as not. All the ritual, centered right on whatever it's got for a podium, and fed nicely with whatever sacrifice they've scrounged."

May winced. "Terrific. New plan?"

"Already said. I'll set the damn church on fire if I must, snap the dome that way. We'll see once we get close. Get eyes on the place, their defenses." He glanced at Harkness, poker-faced. Then away again. "See what _they're_ willing to sacrifice for what they want, if it comes to it. One way or another, we're getting out."

Still mild. May stayed blank, considering the oddly heavy-handed gambit he'd just put out. Another psychological ploy, another reminder that he could and would manipulate someone at need. Just not quite the way it seemed.

There was no way Loki would drag Harkness along and then sell her out to the Salem Seven to get them free, May had actual confidence in that fact - but he _was_ briefly goading the witch with the possibility. She was already pissed off, this would keep her that way for a little while longer. Until they got to the church and nothing else happened to her under their watch. And pissed off wasn't frightened or strung out, which was what _they_ wanted from her. Anger was a damn good motivator in the right circumstance. Worked for May more than once. Give her a target, until the real target showed up.

It didn't mean Harkness couldn't get turned against them, however. Not if the witches pushed on that nerve. It was still a risk Loki that created for them, but on the other hand, he seldom gambled.

May resettled her pack and allowed herself the slightest of sighs. Night was coming behind the veil of darkness, real night. She could feel it.


	15. Army of Darkness

(today marks the never to be repeated 4-part update, in which we simply close this sucker out before Halloween)

15\. Army of Darkness

. . .

Coulson tapped the throat mic to cut off transmission to the Zephyr pilot crew, using his other hand to wave on the handful of field agents and medics they'd brought down on the landing party. They were ready for the hard work of pulling out and soothing the terrified residents still huddled within the small Ashland neighborhood, once the path in was open. Meanwhile, Doctor Strange continued to hover several feet off the ground with his cloak spread around him like a scarab's protective shell, posturing in ways that would have been hilariously absurd if Phil couldn't see the amount of actual work the sorcerer was doing.

Mystic glyphs and complicated seals of pure light rearranged themselves under his contorting hands, reflecting flashes of colors that veered into the unknown off his smooth gloves. His face was drawn tight in an expression Phil recognized easily, having seen a variation of it more than once when Loki was at work at some complicated magical task. He was essentially lockpicking a vault, forcing his way through a set of magical seals until he could overcome someone - or something - else's will and replace the current set of circumstances with one of his own. The heart of magic itself.

Also one of Loki's exhaustingly favorite topics. Coulson felt a muscle in his face twitch at the memories. The man could go on for hours, never repeating himself.

The nature of all that will aside, Coulson felt confident the first wall was going to come down in just a few more seconds. He glanced back to see Fitz shifting his weight from one foot to the other, ready to support the sorcerer in making sure the oblique magics of the Darkhold didn't cut off their mundane comms out here the way it clearly had done to their team further in. He hated the silence from that end, even though he still had faith May and Loki were fine.

Both were survivors. Even if this was, for Loki, a kind of incredibly unwanted high school reunion from hell.

Coulson felt his attention pulled forward as the sorcerer grunted something under his breath. Something shimmered in the air before him, and he felt a sensation like the air physically breaking apart as he watched. He squinted, feeling it pummel him somehow, even as there was very clearly nothing there. A handful of startled mutters from the agents behind him proved he hadn't flipped or was getting a false sensation read from his new hand. Just magic. Weird-ass, ineffable, annoying magic, and its weird-ass, ineffable, annoying users. He half-grimaced, half smiled, putting a few thoughts away for later. "We good?"

"The barrier is open." Being him, Strange managed to intone the words with the kind of stentorian grandeur that caused an instinctive rolling of the eyes. "There's a minor ward set inside and around the remaining survivors, fascinating really. I'll see that we don't disrupt it as we collect them. We'll observe the rest of this portion of the seal retreat as I continue to repair the-"

"Got it." Phil tried to not blurt it too rudely. Like Loki, there was a real risk of Strange going off into a ten minute Chief Engineer Scott-style monologue about what he had done, how he had done it, and how awesome it all was without quite openly bragging. "What about the next section, where our people are?"

Strange's cloak fluttered gently as he came down for a landing next to him. The confidence faltered, but thankfully only a little. "I can sense it from here. As I expected, it's terribly strong. Warded in hard-practiced ways by something that has studied my own methods for millennia. By the very nature of the balance I exist within, I _will_ get through, but the situation remains the same as I outlined earlier. It will take time, dependent mostly on what those inside can do to assist." He continued to look dour.

Phil wouldn't let his expression match. He had too much confidence in his team. "They got this. No matter what."

. . .

The church was a sharp black outline jutting out against the dull grey aura of the power emanating from within it that had replaced any sense of natural night, the once golden gleam of its trio of crosses on the high steeples now faded and broken somehow. Beyond it roiled a sea of darkness that consumed everything, even the trees. Ripples of power poured through the opened doors at the front and streamed down not only the two staircases that flanked it, but also the grander descent that marked the hillside. _Things_ swam in the gloom along the stone stairs, grotesquely glittering darklight creatures without earthly parallel or meant for earthly comprehension.

"It is an unfortunate fact of my recent existence on this planet that I have now seen enough horror films to know where this is going." Loki remained where he hunkered like a predator, delicately balanced atop a flat, dark stone as he stared across the gap towards their final destination. He looked remarkably unhappy, pale hands picking delicately at each other as he thought. "Also, most of those films are terrible and I don't really wish to discuss the matter in depth."

May arched an eyebrow, knelt close by while she took her own tactical assessment of what lay ahead. Inside, she was about as unhappy with the situation before them. "You're the one that brought it up."

Loki appeared to ignore that for a moment before blurting an openly hostile question. "What is your people's _obsession_ with Jesuit priests in these stories? What _is_ it about Catholicism in particular? Good gods, when I was a child-"

"Is he actually real?" Harkness was side-eying him with the same hostile _presentness_ she'd had for the last three hours, somehow cutting off his brewing rant and earning a sharp glare in return. May still wasn't sure her mood change was an upgrade. There had been just enough filled pages in that notebook of hers that she might actually be able to pull something on him if she got sufficiently pissed. Or if she decided to say screw it, and go roll with the women and the demon book ensconced inside the now-desecrated church.

"God help me," said May, trying to not make her choice of phrase drip with as much tired irony as she wanted. Maybe siding with Aggie as a sympathetic ally would help. Good cop, bad cap, SHIELD-style. Besides, wasn't like she was faking this part. "Yes, he is."

"How do you stand it?"

"We make him smuggle in the good stuff from Asgard. Takes the edge off." She could sense him staring at the side of her head next. "Also, is it me, or does that place kinda look like the temple at the top of the skyscraper at the end of the first Ghostbusters movie?"

"I understand that reference. I almost _want_ to die." Loki shook his head. "It's the light coming down the stairs, isn't it? Rather foggy somehow in defiance of its liquidity, hurts the eyes. Quantum-state transposition of reality into a, well, rather bendy concept of itself. Magic of this sort tends to be chaotically multi-dimensional, that's why it turns your human minds into egg salad if you try to math it out. A hallmark of the book's particular sense of style. But yes, does rather look like that bit, only less cheap."

"And then a pair of giant hellhounds show up." May frowned, considering. "Do those exist in some form?"

Blunt response from the black-clad shrike on the rock: "Yes."

"You think they got any in there?"

"Considering the way these situations tend to go for us, quite probably." He sighed. "So. Herein lies the situation. This is the nexus of the 'dome' over the area. The spell that binds the atmosphere is, now that I've clapped eyes on the source location, indeed rooted deep within that structure. Which means all the worst outcomes are in play. We can infer there are six long-time magic users within, an awakened and aware demon book forged from the stuff of raw Chaos, their pets, their friends, their neighbors from the next cancerous dimension over, mayhap even a scrapbooker because I'm sure they're all very happy to see this come to a conclusion and want souvenirs to take home after." As he spoke, the sarcastic drawl took full command of his rising voice. "For all I know, maybe their own demonic God invited that tentacly thing I had to deal with in Scotland once over for coffee."

"You're rambling," May said evenly, instead of saying _you're upset_. "Tactics?"

"Getting in is brainlessly simple. I expect they _want_ us to enter. You'll note the pathways and staircases are clear."

"Kind of like a haunted house at Halloween. Not supposed to touch the guests."

Loki opened his mouth at Harkness's dry interjection, shut it again, then took a visible pause. A sharp shake of his head followed that. "Yes, unfortunately, complete with a VIP room where all bets are off once we're within it. The obvious desire would be to find a way through this without actually giving them what they want."

"Is that possible?" May turned to watch him half-lid his eyes for what was at least the fourth time, using his magically trained senses to assess the defenses of the church. It took a moment, he was always careful to not draw attention. Then they opened again, eyes glittering faintly in the dark. He remained silent, but she could sense the irritation coming off of him. "So, no. We go in. What happens after we knock on the front door?"

Harkness stood up. She brushed at her dirty jeans and picked up her pack, sounding tired. "There's no plan for something like this. Even if you make one, it's going to fall apart once we go inside. Chaos, right?" She shrugged. "But chaos is double-edged. It doesn't actually love them, either, although it certainly seems like their faith relies on pretending it does. It just _is_. So cut all the other bullshit. Focus. We have the witches and the book. The book hates you, tall guy. Can't imagine why, you seem terrific. It's going to fixate on you, and made sure the area specifically messes with you and your buddy on the other side. The witches want me, situation known." She looked at May, her brow furrowing as she thought. " _You're_ the odd one here. No magic. Just a shotgun. They don't care about you. To them, you're just meat." May studied her, realizing in a prickly way she was actually impressed with the rundown. It was roundabout, but she got it. She was the agent of chaos here. The random element. Like Fenna had ultimately been.

Unfortunately, she didn't have a secret Goddess on backup duty. Just a good pair of heinie-kicking boots. She got up and left her set of the field packs on the hill. If everything worked out, they could come back for the gear before exfiltration. "I'm not a big fan of running in and punching things in the face without some sort of goal. Once I have one, sure thing."

"Don't look at the book. Don't engage with it. Don't approach it at _all_. I know Agent May is wholly aware of this advice. Harkness, by now, I think you've got much the same understanding, if not quite as personal." Loki remained hunkered. "The witches are going to be the first issue, then. Let's focus on that, as you suggest. One of them will very likely be maintaining control of the seal on the area. It's an active spell. It has to be, by its nature." He considered that. "It will be the one that doesn't look positively excited at our arrival, because they're already quite busy. The goal is to unbalance that one, Agent May, by any means necessary. The rest of the trick is to survive until help arrives. An endurance fight, we've got ahead of us. We're not out to win it, there's no need. And like the land's not so distant past, we might not be able to. But I'm damn well going to try, regardless."

Loki stood up at last, tall and angry in the dark. He changed again as he moved; no suit now, no comfortably casual street wear. May hadn't seen _this_ look on him in a while - the sleekly gleaming warrior-mage's armor of green and gold and black. He adjusted the bracer on one wrist with an offhanded tweak, ignoring their study as he looked across at the church. "The last time the book and I faced each other, I was all but tattered. Inside and out." He tilted his head slightly, grim. "Not today. Not ever again. I will deal with the book as we work, try to reduce its influence on you two, and fox what it may add to the perils around us. Harkness, five witches of the six will be intent on you." He glanced at her. "You will not be dealing with that alone. I will not be keeping all my focus on the tome while more agile dangers are moving around us."

"Not exactly the tone you had just a little while ago." She was staring at him, still visibly upset. May turned enough to wedge her shoulder into the air between them, waiting to see if this was the moment he'd set up by mistake. "Sure we're not going to get down there and you just shove me through the door and run?"

"Not a chance. If you want an oath so you can believe a single thing said since we've met, you can mark this as one. I will _never_ give the Darkhold what it wants, and I say its name now so it may know my intent. Got you moving, though, didn't it?" He inclined his head more sharply, polite again. "No grand scale to that twist, Lady Harkness. No final plan behind my use of you. I dragged you this far through your upset with me, and if you wish, I'll apologize for it should we survive. Now. Go be upset with _them_." He smiled, jackal-wide in the dark. "And I might suggest that tonight, magic would be _explicitly_ useful to your own survival. You wish to discuss focus? I'll bring up individual will. They want yours. Don't give it to them. That, even more than the crack in the ritual, is what we need to escape tonight. Will."

He spread his hands, readying one more calm, polite salvo. "In the end, it's going to be your decision whether we all live or die. The ramifications of this are fated to spread far beyond this ruined place. So that's the final question, and it's a painful one - how much do _you_ wish to survive, after all you've seen?"

The witch didn't answer him, not aloud. But she kept her pack of small but dangerous magical armaments, and in her hands were a bottle of paradoxically flammable holy water and a lighter.

"Good enough," Loki said. "Let's go."


	16. Stranger Things

16\. Stranger Things

. . .

All sorcerers knew that the deepest secrets of magic could be represented not only by arcane notations and complex equations, but by the arrhythmic thrum of each word of power, a primal force thrusting its way throughout layers of nestled reality. The way an aura could roll across mortal flesh, leaving terrifying changes as it passed; the way the basic elements of the universe could stir into life within stone or wind or fire.

The Darkhold's secrets were given in whisper and in Word, and the nave of the now-mutilated church churned full of these, the air itself clogged thick with pure Chaos. Here within its newly anointed throne room, atop a pedestal that had once held a far different sacred book, the Darkhold gleamed. Renewed in its own hellish re-baptism, until the black leather that made up its face seemed almost silvery alive under the gleam of magic's light. Its own sigil lay upon its face, seeming to writhe like a lizard.

The wooden floor around the book was sticky with aging blood and the air held more flecks of the ash that choked off the wind in the trees beyond. Here it became clearer what the ash represented; each slice of ether a reflection of a dead universe, a corpse, a glimpse into places where Chthon had walked, and where Chthon had collected all the names of the dead to himself, for himself.

Six women still ringed it in a circle of deadly honor, five focused inward on the challengers headed their way; the interlopers and their final prize, their lost one's descendent. One knelt with the backs of her hands atop her knees, the ritualized concept and the Word of power behind the dome of corruption her responsibility. She flickered; half there, half not. This one funneled the word through gleams of light that flickered between the two upturned palms, strings of power that formed into shapes only she knew. Thread held the thread that seamed their trap tight, and no other. Thread's lips moved in concert with the old spell, a greatly weakened echo of the one that had wrapped Atlantis in darkness when she was then a young girl.

Too much had weakened for them since those wondrous black days, as now they feared Order threatened to unbalance Chaos even further.

Stagnant air and desecrated wood. Just outside of the church, Aggie Harkness paused for a moment, slowing the group. She knelt and dug her fingernails down hard and fast through the dirt until she came up with a tiny, well-aged fragment of cypress gone pure white. On its face, etched words set in a pattern. One remnant of the sator square the long-ago cunning woman had put all her hopes into. The corruption had not touched it, a tiny miracle. Oshtur's reminder of what Fenna had sacrificed in service to light. She breathed out, her own air turning to mist in the cool of the deep night, and her hand curled around the remnant of Centralia's old circle of protection. What it meant to Aggie didn't show on her face as she stood back up. Loki paused for a moment for her sake before striding up the final stairs. He opened the door to the narthex of the church with a single flick of his hand and a sibilant whisper of magic.

Five turned towards him, ready. Loki didn't blink. He didn't even bother to take the first strike.

Aggie finally answered his hillside question in the only way she could, with a bottle of her holy water mix that arced its way deep into the church in a neat baseball-style pitch flung hard-out from her shoulder. This one didn't have a rag stuffed into it to ignite the vodka mixed within. It wasn't meant to be an underpowered molotov, simple friend to revolutionaries worldwide. This one, by her will, had become a _bomb_.

She muttered a word under her breath, shaky and under-practiced. Good enough. Loki watched it hit the spreading black stain of blood and then explode into white hot fire and a burst of etheric rainbow shrapnel. A small act of witch's furious defiance, but with a word of his own, he gave it a little nudge of encouragement.

Three pews lit up and became ash as the fire rebirthed itself into a proper inferno. Two witches staggered away, roaring in anger at what was really, considering their place on the opposite team, a dirty trick on behalf of the gods of Order. The trio wasn't done yet. As Loki's _particular_ idea of chaos took hold of the scene, May slipped in during one of the flashes of fire and dashed around the side of the church into low cover. She already had Thread in her sights, but there were going to be other hurdles first. She was in position to wait for Loki to clear a few of them out.

One of Salem's sisters regathered herself more quickly than the others, flinging a ghostly-thin hand out towards the tall, black figure framed defiantly in the church's door. Around her spun up pillars of reddish light, and from them came one of her gifts from the Darkhold's whisper - ghastly shapes that cut multidimensional mirror-ribbons of light around them as they slipped fast towards their target.

The knife returned to Loki's hand, that slender athame once made for a Queen and now bound to his hand alone. He, too, cut the air to pieces as the fanged things tried to dodge and plunge towards him. Another slash to head off their attempt to dodge his attack, and they were forced into the same layer of reality where he stood fast.

Here in reality it was clearer what they really were; already-dead creatures forged from the pieces of dead demons, drained and fleshy fragments strapped together by razored clasps and darkly gleaming stitches. Insane eyes burned deep within malformed faces, glinting their dark umber flames. Boogeymen, stitched into unlife from pure nightmares meant to be forgotten by day, and turned into slaves. A maddened Dreamer's only children.

They were not creatures of _his_ nightmares, however. Long ago, his had contained far worse monstrosities than these things. Loki looked at them with a mild expression of distaste, and as they howled and slavered towards him across the warping wooden floor, they died for the second time in a rush of green fire and a single jab of the sacred knife into the cold gel of the pack leader's singular eyeball.

Dreamer howled, infuriated. As if answering, one of the others snapped up and pulled her away into safety, adding her own scream to her leader's and turning it into a banshee wail of protection. Loki flinched away from the sheer press of sound. From alongside the pair came another of the sisters - Ghost, by the grayness of her skin and dress, color long since leeched from her eyes. She slipped through light itself, not only reality, and became intangible. Not illusion, not multidimensional, just a ghost whose dead blank eyes suddenly turned black and cracked like porcelain… or so it seemed.

May saw something flutter to the floor where Ghost had been, a scrap of parchment that shaky logic told her was probably some sort of tether between the witch and the power she drew from the Darkhold. Aggie's story stuck with her - Dreamer had supposedly held a page of the book before all this. It could likely be a shared power, and that their sigils all came from that page. This scrap was an example of that work, a token. Like a lich's mythic phylactery. She grimaced, realizing she had officially been around Loki _way_ too damned much, and ducked out with her eyes mostly shut to try and kick the scrap of paper into the white-hot fire still rearranging the field of battle.

As her foot connected with it, a sudden ripple of pure fear forced its way into her and made her freeze. She still managed to not look at the sigil that was scrawled there, knowing from Simmons' old experience and Loki's own horrific takeover what havoc the words of the book could cause in a mind. But even this tiny contact had a tangible effect. For that frozen second she saw _herself_ , as if through a warped mirror.

Here was a Melinda May she almost couldn't recognize, trapped and bound and strapped to a physician's table. Around her were countless shades. Like Ghost's ethereal form, still lunging in slow motion towards Loki and the witch waiting behind him, they were dead clay figures with eyes dripping pitch black through cracks in their faces. This May screamed and howled almost ceaselessly, and she knew her own voice well enough to recognize the strain in it, the tearing vocal cords and the raw fright she had _never_ permitted to run so wild within herself before. A May outright dying from the sheer stress of terror itself, a reflection of herself in one of those other realities the power of Chaos could rip through.

 _This_ May, however, snarled in defiance. She tore herself free of the memory/reflection's grasp and finished her kick, satisfied when the edges of the yellowing scrap of parchment began to turn black and then lit up in flame. She dove back into cover before the shadows at the edges of the pews could fix on her instead of the theoretically more dangerous pair of magic users.

Time sped up again. Ghost continued her lunge, confident in her untouchability - until she staggered to a halt, real and whole again, and visibly surprised by the forced change. Dreamer screamed a command to her, and the witch turned to move back into cover. Not quite fast enough, however. Harkness came out from behind Loki and ducked in to slap hard at Ghost's face with the chip of wood in her hand. It sizzled into an immediate scar, and Ghost staggered away, furious. Harkness already had another bottle of holy water in the hand with the wooden chip, and the small handgun in another. Without thinking, she followed May's example of the last few nights, took aim, and dumped three rapid shots straight into the center of mass. Ghost staggered back, bloodied but far from dead. Enough to take her out of the fight, at least momentarily.

Meanwhile, Loki felt the thrum of power build as the Darkhold's current protectors tried to regroup. It was going to add its own voice to the fray if possible, chain its way through the sister-witches and make Chaos itself manifest. He thought he might have a few ideas about how it intended to strike at him. He also thought he wasn't going to wait around for it or its new keepers to get on with it.

He strode deeper into the church, on his way towards the book itself.

. . .

Phil turned as the sorcerer's head snapped up, followed with a soft, fast mutter that held the structure of some spell within it - and more than a few mundane profanities. He kept his own silence, however, until the fresh tension eased off of the aristocratic-looking Strange. Down the dirty asphalt street, a handful of medics and field agents qualified for civilian recovery were keeping dozens of frightened looking people corralled up. They were being helped by a couple of the locals, including a pastor that had warned them of a few flakier elements of the group. Phil got the idea that wasn't the first time she'd a conversation like this recently, and was kind of thankful Loki hadn't set said flaky people on fire. "What was it?"

"A ripple through the dome, a change in the pattern. I believe they're in contact with whatever circumstances are maintaining it." Strange looked evenly down into his face, otherwise alert.

"By contact, you obviously mean something's starting to blow up in there real good." He took in the curt nod, considering. "Okay." Next, he tapped the throat mic that kept him connected to the rest of the team. "Secondary team, back to the Quinjet. Primary, stay with the civilians. Wheels up in two minutes, we're going to take another pass over the energy structure and look for a change at close range."

Strange's face crinkled at the phrasing. "Energ-"

"Just let me technobabble at my kids my way, okay?" Phil jerked a thumb down the path towards where the jump-jet would already be warming back up. "You want a comfy front row seat so you can do your magic domey-cracky action, this is how we make it happen."

. . .

The Darkhold's pages fluttered, reality worming and shifting through the black ink that ran along each surface like rivulets of blood. Each phrase, each spell, each drip of chaos was more than enough to break a mind in two and then reforge it to its own purpose. Loki knew that intimately, remembered very well how its whispers burned their way into him, silenced his idea of self, replaced it with a mindless thing that called out into the new void to bring forth the horrific children of Chthon. Only an accident of chance, a human's desperate gambit had saved him from this broken shell of his identity. That salvation had _cost_ \- but as he healed, in time, he began to realize that was also the hour an enemy and a former victim had first started to become a friend.

And in secret truth, not the only one. There was much here worth defending. He waited, patient and confident, to see what the Darkhold had in store for him this time. To deflect it, to pave the way for Agent May's attack on the witch that held them within Centralia's trap, and to ensure Harkness would not be close to the lure of this thing's whisper. He kept his direct gaze safe away from the thing's writhing pages, and waited.

As expected, a flutter of yellow began to build from the shifted air around the Darkhold. A gleam of grey. A mirror, sharpened and designed to try and pierce him once more; the echo of a past Keeper who no longer existed, save as a memory buried inside his mind. The book wanted to tear it free and place it back into reality. Shock him with the illusion of his own old monstrous self, empowering it all with the link it held through the five women still attempting to regroup for another assault on the trio. Another witch had already fixed on Harkness, to replace Ghost's failed assault with one of her own.

Loki smiled, the lips curving thin but content now. His fears began to leave. Yes, the book was awake. But yes, it was still weakened. The Seven were still six. The land had not yet fully turned. Harkness fought against them. And as for himself…

 _Your name is still written in its pages,_ again warned the long-ago whisper of Doctor Strange.

Yes, it was.

His smile widened, dangerous and knife-close to the mad jackal of the past. He knew who he was, and he raised one bone-white hand as the yellow ghoul began to malform itself into being. He did not need the old cant - _I Am_ \- for it was redundant. But he did speak to the book and to the ghost of his broken self that it now tried to put between them. Now that he knew what he faced, his tension was long gone. There was nothing to fear here, after all. His words were calm and powerful, a prince's voice of command that carried throughout the church. A God's voice.

"I am Loki. Of Asgard. Of Jotunheim. Of Midgard. Of Everywhere and of Nothing. No one place may hold all of me. My name is the closing of a door, the click of a lock, the secret of the key. I have been the bridge, and I have been the void. I am a trickster creature, the prince of nowhere, and the God of Change, and my road will _not_ end here as your weakened slave. You think to call to me with my own name writ in blood in your pages, but you don't have all of me any longer. You never will again. I hold more names than you know, and I am more than those names, now and forever."

Now the rage came back. If the book thought he was here to service Chthon's revenge, let it suffer _his_ instead. Not even a defeat he craved. Its humiliation, while they left safely with its servants scattered apart. That would be more than enough for him. He snarled, ferocity incarnate, knowing he would be untouched this time. Now that he had seen its pack of defenses, and realized again that there was much to fight for. There would be no defeat for him here. Not tonight. " _You're out of date!_ "

The yellow ghost disappeared once more, as if the strings in its puppet back were simply snapped apart. His defiance rippled through the spell, tearing it into shreds, sending a mage's feedback into the pages and through the witches. The five of them spasmed, electric shocks of magical overload as the book defended itself and left them to their own safety.

One, almost like Ghost, seemed to snap through reality before shimmering into place again, as if connected somewhere else by a rubber band.

But they were held still, and the powers congealing inside the church wouldn't act without their command. Loki had forced a pause. That was the opening May was watching for. Thread alone wasn't connected to the circle of power in the same way, caught up in the secondary ritual. She maintained the trap of their own design, and fed by chaos's strength.

Now that trap just might turn on its maker.

May came back out of hiding and began her lunge for the undefended witch, calculating exactly how hard the steel-reinforced heel of her boot was going to connect with the meditating woman's chin at the apex of her roundhouse kick, and being silently, _deeply_ satisfied with the bony crunch she earned for her trouble.


	17. The VVitch

17\. The VVitch

. . .

"Whoa!" Fitz blurted the word as the monitor he was keeping a nervous eye on registered the ripple-effect of what was, as far as their machines could parallel it, something vaguely like a magical EMP. He excitedly whipped his head back and forth, looking in turns at the monitor and where Strange stood, rigid, as the unseen resonance of the strike passed over his senses. "That the moment you've been waiting for?"

He got a terse nod. Strange waved at the map he'd created, bringing up a different visual replication layer of what he 'saw.' The dome of chaotic energy that surrounded Centralia had indeed sprung a crack at last, a delta-like spray of wounds emanating from a central point just outside the ruined town itself. But unlike those in the earth below, these cracks showed light spilling inward in a rush. A gloved hand pointed at the origin point of the crack. "Miraculous. They've succeeded at this, at _night_. I might have my issues with the man, but he does arrange results. Director, can you get us directly above that spot?"

Phil glanced at Fitz as he hastily put together the exact GPS location, waiting until the engineer looked up with a glance of triumph. He reached out his artificial hand for the tablet in Fitz's hand, memorizing the numbers at a glance. "I'll get us in motion. Anything we can do?"

Strange was focused on the image. Phil got the distinct sense he was mapping out how he was going to personally rip that crack wider apart. Preferably until it was dismantled entirely. "Keep your bird in the air and maintain shields until we're on location. I'd like the bay opened once we arrive, so I may make visual contact with the situation. This is _my_ duty now. When we can get on the ground and see if there are yet more wounded, I'll step aside then."

"Roger that. Fitz, do me a favor, show him the way back to the hatch."

. . .

Thread slumped over with a muffled cry, something going wrong with the light in her hands. They were nigh-immortal and powerful, but fleshy enough. Like the demons, a good whack certainly bought time. The second after May's boot had connected with the woman's face, it was like a hurricane's gust had blown through the room. To some extent, it had - the sheer force Thread had been maintaining went awry, blowing a hole through the roof of the old church and, next welcome miracle, letting in a single sliver of _real_ moonlight.

Dreamer whirled out of Scream's grasp, her shaking hands curled in fury as she saw not only her sister still shuddering on the floor in distorted agony, but the mere human woman standing over her in a martial pose of triumph. One arm shot up, ready to hurl the manifestation of her pure outrage at the woman's back. Scream tugged at her again, barely managing to save them both from the full ice-strike Loki launched at the pair. Intricate frost patterns swirled against the fabric of their robes to show how closely they dodged, but were gone a second later when another of Aggie's homemade bombs dropped at their feet, flaring to life.

They danced back, Scream half-dragging their leader into the safer ring around the book. The Darkhold itself fluttered as if offended, the still-rising wind pouring in from the torn roof to assault it. Harkness stepped forward, now well away from Loki. She had one bomb left, clutched in a white-knuckle grip as she tried to choose a good moment for it. Too soon and the strongest part of her arsenal would be wasted. Too late, and the six remaining witches of Salem's nightmare were going to regather and, worst case, push them back just long enough to reseal the zone of corruption around them. Thread was already stirring, and May wasn't going to be able to remain close. Ghost was finding her feet again, turning slow towards her. Scream and Dreamer were still in play.

That left two more. Aggie raised the bottle, scanning the darkening church fast to see where either of them had gone.

An answer came to her in the most brutal of ways. A figure slithered up from the shadows between the pews where she stood, blackness wrapping around her legs and the rest of the human-shaped mass coming up to slam her down to the floor, knocking out her breath. The bottle of holy water mix dropped from her hand. She tried to scrabble for it, but the tip of a shadow-snake's tail whipped up to roll it further away.

There was no other choice but to look up, into Snake's hollowed, ophidian face. Slit eyes stared back into hers, the change that was this witch's gift giving her the ability to keep Aggie entangled tight. The witch leaned in, as if to kiss her. "It isn't too late, little sister. Not too late, not yet." Sibilant words, calm, almost kind.

Aggie struggled, barely catching sight of Loki with his hands up. Little he could do just yet, not with Snake wrapped so closely around her legs, her arms, her chest. One spasm, and her ribs would be crunched. She sneered up at the witch, pissed off. She struggled anyway, gaining not much but a thwack of her shoulders against the hard floor.

Snake's face kept up with hers as she fought, never breaking eye contact. "They burned you out of your house, little sister. They've feared you and hated you for years, over nothing. When you lost everything, they gave you nothing. No comfort. No peace. If you stand against us and think to survive, that's yet all you'll be given - _nothing_. You have no place among them. It isn't too late. Your fury is a gift, not a mark we will hold against you. It is the touch of Chaos itself. Give it it us. _Ride_ with us."

" _Harkness_ -"

The sleek head with pale scales rippling just under its flesh snapped around to look at Loki to silence him, then back at her. "Would you struggle for _his_ sake? A lord of lies?" A rattle came from the elongating throat, strange and bony. A laugh, or what passed for one. "Manipulator. User. Trickster, indeed. But for a twist of fate he would be as much _our_ ally as he is our enemy now."

The coil tightening around her abdomen spasmed once, trying to force Snake's words into her through the conduit of raw pain. Aggie howled, drawing Loki another step closer to try and find an opening in which to help, even as Dreamer and the rest were preparing to strike at him again. Either fully empowered - if she gave in - or enough to buy them time to make off with the book. The spasm eased off and she dragged in a ragged breath, letting it slow as if she were thinking. Then she screamed one more time, dislocating her shoulder as she managed to ease her arm out just enough to fling it towards her last bottle. In the scream was a word of power; a small one, but it was enough. The bottle jumped back towards her hand, and before Snake could rear back, Aggie shoved the holy water mix up into her horrified mouth. The glistening fangs tore the thin plastic bottle open with a reflexive snap, causing its contents to drip down the woman's jaw.

Black corruption and venomous bile began to spill down towards her, freezing into harmless drops and whispered away by another's magic. Snake's rubbery limbs pulled free in horror, preparing to clasp at her own jaw. It might take centuries to heal, that holy wound. Ice smashed into her, shoving her back and making the air go as crisp as midnight in winter. _Now_ Loki could stand between fallen Harkness and the regathering witches.

She stared at his back while she kept trying to breathe normally again, still not sure what exactly had just happened. Not sure if she'd made the right choice.

But Snake had said one true thing, she supposed. Whatever else, the man _was_ clearly their enemy. Now, if not before. He hadn't been hers. It meant something, anyway.

And then the roof lit up with a white blaze so brilliant, every color in existence was sparkling somewhere within it.

Like shadows left behind after a nuclear assault, the six witches began to scramble back, towards the book. The light came down and split the earth between them, cutting them off - but there was Fade, after all. Still shimmering in and out, she lunged for the Darkhold. The last ditch protector. A flash of red began to fill the room, Doctor Strange's mystic cloak and his own aura of power spreading to cut off the corruption at its source. Between his gloved hands, a reflection of that black book itself shimmered - the Book of the Vishanti, here with him now, even as it lay safe in its chamber beneath his Sanctorum.

Fade opened her mouth, shouting something soundless as she sliced in and out of reality towards the pedestal where the book lay, its pages stunned into stillness by the sheer aura of its kinsman of Order.

Dreamer raised one hand, as if in victory, just as Strange summoned a great seal and cut off the bulk of what Fade was trying to do. Still, she managed to snatch at the Darkhold. In her hand, a page tore free with a sound like rending flesh. Grimacing, she vanished. That was her gift - Fade had tethered herself somewhere else, and had snapped back to it. The bolthole.

"Well, _shit_ ," said Strange, the odd choice of language coming out in an affronted East Coast drawl. He dropped lightly to the floor with his soft boots tapping lightly, staring at the Darkhold as it lay silent, its black energy tamed for now. Four witches slumped to the ground, eying him with open loathing. The fifth, Thread, still trembled. "Not _quite_ as clean as I wanted."

"Nor as fast as I wanted," muttered Loki, watching the witches. They were exhausted. More so even than the woman behind him. The Darkhold had either given up - or, worrisome thought, considering the page torn free, had eked out a slight win of some form.

"Did I ask?" Strange spun on him, less angry and more simply annoyed with an arrogance fit to match his own.

Loki shrugged with false cheeriness and glanced at May, who rolled her eyes and strode away from Thread and past him towards where Harkness lay. Now that there was a proper moment of peace, at least one of them could make sure the lady was going to be all right. "Tell me you came here with a proper containment plan."

"To make up for the one you whiffed?"

"Did _I_ ask?" Loki sneered at the sorcerer. He pointed at the witches, visibly upset. Absurdly, Ghost flinched. "Them. Book. _Plan_?"

"Do me a favor. Crystallize the ladies, now that their power source has been cut." Strange looked away, irritated as he allowed a brief and subtle compliment. "You're better at base imprisonments. We can use that, a little runing, and SHIELD's ridiculous cubes to transport them back to my house. I've already begun some arrangements there."

A snap of Loki's fingers, enjoying the sensation of the sheer amount of power running through the room now. Order, to be sure, but he could harness the Vishanti's gifts in a pinch. It made the request even easier. Five prisons of ice, and not a few pissed-off expressions trapped within. "And the book?"

"I've got a few ideas." Strange muttered under his breath, making a few quick notes. Runes and glyphs hashed into light before him, faded again. "And I have to figure out what was taken this time. Delightful."

" _This_ time?"

"Haven't told that story?"

Loki sighed. "No, Strange. I have not heard that particular tale."

"You'll loathe it. It's miserable."

. . .

May looked up from the step where she'd managed to coax the bruising Harkness, amused by the worn-out look on Loki's face. He was rubbing at his high, pale brow. Everything up this point had been tense for him, sure. But ten minutes in the sorcerers supreme's presence, and now the man looked like he had a hangover. It was always a little funny, seeing Loki get a taste of what being around _him_ could be like. She caught his look, gave Harkness a clinical but comforting enough pat on the shoulder, and moved off.

Loki dropped onto the step next to the woman. "So. This was a day."

Aggie said nothing at first. She'd been looking at the ground, the small dip in the earth where she'd found Fenna's old wood chip still torn open. The chip itself remained in her pocket. He saw her eyes flicker up, examining the couple of SHIELD medics Phil had brought in. The rest were still just south in Ashland, helping the stunned civilians as best they could. "Was it?" Her voice was hoarse. He could still hear the caution in it. The distrust.

Well, he'd put it there. Time to start addressing it, in some fashion. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers together like the now-lost roof of the church behind them. "I'm sorry for all my part in it. And with that, what's true, Harkness? What means more to you now that it's almost over? Your anger with me, or the need you served to protect those who might or might not care for you?"

She looked away. There was a wound under the skin, hot and purifying. Like a line of sacred salt. He'd hit a nerve, but not enough to make her see it yet.

He glanced up, seeing the first hazy gleam of dawn begin to break the sky. Strange how much comfort that sight gave him now. "When I was young, I believed curses could sleep in the blood, shape what you were and could be. You were not meant to escape what you were born as. Not a feeble idea, you must understand. Not to me. And when I became older, there came a moment where this belief was strong enough to shatter my mind into pieces. It's taken a long time to recover from that. And in so doing, I understand now how wrong that belief was. There is _always_ a choice."

She still wasn't looking at him, but he could tell she was listening. He went on. "You were born from the bloodline of witches sworn to Chaos itself. And unlike the rest of your family since, you've seen that blood tested… and today you come out alive and bound by free will alone, by your own decision. I didn't force that one for you."

It took a moment before she could speak. A whisper now, and not hoarse only because of Snake's assault. "I just wanted to try and save someone. I couldn't save my husband."

Loki cocked his head, considering her quietly. "Sometimes before you can truly save another, you must begin with yourself." He smiled a little when that drew her to look at him again. "And for what it's worth, and for better and for worse… your neighbors survive, all."

" _Fucking_ Marty. Mean old hag." A raspy little laugh managed to burble out of her, small and real. The anger was starting to drain out of it. He'd said the only thing he could to her, the truth. "Man. This scene would have blown her mind."

"Right to bits." He sounded outright cheerful about that mental image, catching May pace out of the corner of his eye. "Excuse me a moment. One of us will be back with you shortly."

. . .

May looked at Loki as he ambled back towards her. "Always have a talent for making friends."

"I think I'm improving, actually. I don't think she's apt to shank me any longer. Which is pleasant. Her upset was brief but notable." He stuck his hands in the pockets of the now-dirty jeans he wore and shrugged. "Phil going to be available shortly, do you know offhand?"

"He's coordinating moving the prisoners and the book with Strange. Your good bud's-" she had to smirk at his immediate grimace, "got some associates of his working on storage options for the book itself."

"I submit a deep space launch. I didn't have the nerve last time, but maybe he could make it work."

She snorted. "After that, yeah, I can make sure he swings over. Something on your mind?"

Some hint of a twitch, some tiny pause in his next shrug made her narrow her eyes at him. He caught her expression. "What?"

"What are you up to?"

He feigned innocence. Badly. On purpose. The thin grin of real amusement was filtering back. Oh, he was up to _something_. "Loki."

He took a hand out of his pocket and gestured vaguely. "I have a suggestion to offer." The tone he used made her jaw slacken slightly, picking out what he meant from the nuance of his behavior. "Oh, what?" He snorted, sardonic. "You pick up a homeless girl off the streets and give her a badge, you've hired that- that _mad_ _scientist_ on Fitz and Simmons's vouchsafe. Stars alone know what he's up to in his house. Don't talk to me about the vetting process, I've no idea how he passed it all." He gestured at himself next. "Of which then to add - you hired _me_ , you godless, unlucky fools. And should Daisy, aforementioned street reprobate, return to the flock, who _knows_ what stray pups she'll drag along in her wake? What's one more, considering?"

May folded her arms, trying to not laugh at his dramatics. "Oh, my God."

"Historian, which means easily trainable analytics. The organization always needs those. Witch, hurrah, I'm not your only magus on staff any longer…"

She tried to put up a hand before he forged on, but he had one more thing left to say and wouldn't be diverted. "And she's earned a second chance, I think. Another life. The one here's been rather… disintegrated."

"Loki…" She stopped herself instead and almost let that laugh all the way out. He'd picked up one major trait from Coulson at some point. That _damned_ need to give a second chance to others, when they just might have earned it. "Forget it. I'll get you to him once I know he's open.


	18. Epilogue: Delta Green

Epilogue: Delta Green

. . .

Phil Coulson ambled between the linoleum-floor dining area, where his shoes clacked softly, back towards the soft pile of the old living room carpet. The pastor, Kelly Sue, had happily offered up the floor level of her house for a few hours as a staging ground for him, while she kept busy with the townsfolk. Getting the first-pass report from Strange and Loki was a help - the locals were only going to be displaced a few days while Damage Control fixed up what they could. The long-term wreckage beneath Centralia that had radiated into Byrnesville in years past wasn't yet marching to Ashland. The demonic damage itself was temporary.

It was something, anyway.

As he wandered, looking at pictures of church socials and Christmas parties, he heard the sounds of paper sheets ruffling against each other. "I'm not sure I'm completely following. I'm sorry, it's been…" The woman's voice trailed off, fading. Phil turned to look at her.

Aggie Harkness absently patted at the sleek top of the grey cat's head, smiling a little as it bunted hard against her fingers. He could tell from where he was that the animal was purring up a small storm. Probably hadn't stopped since they'd gotten her back to the neighborhood. Less helpfully, Sabrina's back legs were firmly planted on a few of the sheets of paperwork offered to potential new hires. She tugged at them, waggling them free and then leaning back to pinch distractedly at the clean pair of jeans she was wearing. "I mean. Obviously it's a job offer. But I don't understand where this is coming from."

"It's pretty simple. You got a clear recommendation from someone that doesn't really do those. And after letting him make his case and doing a quick bit of background checking myself, I'm backing it." He grinned as she shot him a look. "Must have done something okay in there. Loki's kinda picky about who he sticks up for."

"I noticed he's a little… _something_ , yeah." She snorted. "Is he like this all the time?"

"You got him on a good week. Sign on, and you'll find out sometimes he's a _real_ pain in the ass." That startled a genuine laugh out of her, abrupt enough to get the cat moving. Sabrina jumped delicately down from the table, zooming to the base of the staircase like a silver streak. She looked back over her shoulder at her owner, clearly offended to her very bones. Phil waggled his hand at the cat, offering a chance at some truce-petting. She zipped halfway up the stairs, content to glower at him through the railing. "Tough crowd. Anyway, though, that's one of a few things to consider before you finish the paperwork."

Aggie flipped to one of the pages in the middle of the short stack. "Yeah, I'm seeing… an assessment and training period before I'm cleared for possible field duty. Training period to be determined by the supervising officer assigned to me." She frowned. "You're hiring me as an analyst."

"Well. That's what's on the intake paperwork."

She shot him a look, probing and alert. "What's not on the paperwork?"

Phil crossed back into the kitchen and tugged out one of the chairs right next to her. He sat down and clasped his hands together on the table, regarding her evenly. "To be clear, you _would_ get assigned to the analytics detail as office support, especially early on. You've got more than enough qualifying research credentials in your educational history that we can trial you through that no problem."

"But."

"But, things to consider… your supervising officer, the guy that gets to oversee all that, is gonna be Loki." He gave her a wry grin as she blinked. "Or will be, once I tell _him_ that's the plan."

"Oh, my God. So the assessment and training I'm going to be getting…" She started rubbing at her forehead, two fingers pressing hard right between her eyes in an accidental pun.

"Yep. We're gonna Hogwarts the hell outta this."

"Wow." Aggie laughed again, small and weak. She flipped back to the top of the stack, looking at her legal name where it was machine-printed in the various fields. _Agatha L. Harkness_. A second later and she was fumbling for the pen on the other chair, where Sabrina had knocked it as soon as she'd seen it. Aggie paused, the nib of it already about to scrape the paper. "Quick question, if I can ask."

"Sure thing. No better time than right now."

She smiled, lopsided and still a little tired. Then she looked hesitant. "Um. Can I bring my cat?"

Phil shrugged. He knew offhand of a few small pets that had been authorized for the on-site housing, one remarkably uptight budgie in Science, and the guy in Maintenance who had fought hard to keep his dog. "Keep her in the area assigned to you, don't make her an issue with other agents with allergies, yeah, no problem. If there _is_ a problem, you get a grace period to find either yourself or her a place offsite."

"That's fair." Harkness sucked in a breath and started the process of putting her signature in about twelve different entries per page of intake. "Oh, boy. This is going to get weird."

Coulson laughed. "Yeah, well. That's the secret SHIELD motto."

. . .

Loki leaned against the recovered SHIELD-issue SUV he and May had first arrived at the region in, his arms crossed against his fine black suit. He watched as Coulson left the pastor's house alone and began wandering in his direction, his human friend stuffing a sheaf of paperwork inside the crisp leather folder he'd brought in with him. Loki lazily shoved himself upright with an elbow, rocking the vehicle slightly by virtue of forgetting his natural strength for a second. A long few days, indeed. "And thus?"

"Not gonna miss much about being the big boss. Getting to meet new hires is actually one of them." Phil waved the folder in his hand with a grin. "Mostly because by the tenth page of signing their name over and over, they start making some pretty great faces."

He nodded, satisfied with that as a better outcome for the lady and glancing over Phil's head at the whisper of red fabric on the other end of the street. He made a moue of annoyance. "That's that, then. I suppose next I'll have to co-ordinate with Stra-"

"You're gonna be her supervisor."

"I- _what_?" Loki froze, staring down into Phil's face, the effect comically aghast. Phil stared back, enjoying the hell out of the poleaxed look on the slender face. He recovered a second later, but he was quite clearly not going to be able to play off the reaction like it hadn't happened. He blinked a couple of times, rapidly, then stared at the pastor's house. "I _beg_ your pardon?"

"Hiring her was your idea. Buckle up. I'm not done with you." Phil grinned even wider, almost manically delighted with getting the undeniable upper hand on the alien sorcerer. Loki was dead silent, watching him with an expression of almost creeping horror. "A while back, I dropped a suggestion for a new division that you shot down so fast I couldn't even tell you what the acronym I came up with it stood for."

"I thought it was a _joke_. Phil. I grow concerned."

The Director, soon to be ex-Director, shrugged. "At the time, it was a joke. Right now, not so much." He lifted his chin, unable to stop grinning like an asshole. "The Wizardry, Alchemy, and Necromancy Department. W.A.N.D."

Loki just looked at him in silence, the color draining even further from his already pale face.

"Founding Agent, Brigham Locke. Although obviously we all know what that means. Special Advisory Committee, Doctor Stephen Strange, Doctor Jericho Drumm."

"I-"

"First Junior Trainee, Aggie Harkness. I got the fast sense she didn't really dig going by Agatha. I'm sure you'll pick up some others pretty quick. It's like lint on that suit of yours." The obvious occurred to him. "Or cat hair."

" _Phil_." Loki visibly struggled, fought his composure back enough to speak clearly again. "You're to step down, and in the process, by some mad design, leave _me_ with more power?"

Coulson shrugged again. God, this was kind of beautiful. Seeing Loki, of all people, totally caught unawares was like Halley's Comet coming around twice in a lifetime.

"Good _Gods_ , Coulson, I didn't think you secretly hated these people."

That settled him down a bit, watching the defensive self-deprecation get in the way of what he actually intended with this move. "You know it's not that." He looked up at his friend's face, sober now. "Nick Fury buried a lot of secrets during his time as Director. Some of them came back to haunt us. And a few were meant to be failsafes, in case some of those things he left behind went bad. I'm doing the same. I'm not gonna get in Mace's way when he steps in. I don't want to, and I don't want to have to. But just in case things come up that he can't take, or something bad happens that I can't get control of, this is meant to be one more, well, _shield_ we can throw up to handle it. A little safeguard I want to set up, one place inside our organization where I always know what the score is. You'll have to put up with a lot of the bureaucracy coming your way over this, sure. But you're also a prince, right? What's a _little_ authority and delegation?"

Loki studied him, obviously troubled.

"The fact that it's bugging the crap out of you is a good sign, you know. If you were _actually_ finally gonna go back over the high side over this, you'd be picking out replacement wallpaper for my office already." Phil felt the smirk come back for a second, but didn't let it stick around.

Loki looked away, towards the now-distant ruins of Centralia. "Change might be my sigil and my word now, but that doesn't always mean I can take to it as quickly as your kind does."

"It's gonna be fine. I've got confidence in you."

Loki shuddered. "That is _exactly_ the sort of thing I'm talking about." Then he slumped slightly, defeated. "I was not exaggerating when I told Harkness I was going to murder a bottle of fire-rye when I got back. I was merely predicting my own fate."

"Is that one of the ones that gives us weenie humans a killer hangover for three days, or is it one of the ones that can _literally_ kill us?"

"The latter."

"Yeah, all you."

"Damned _right_ , all mine." Loki shoved his hands into his pockets, peering down at his friend. A moment later, he bent a finger and used its knuckle to gesture at the black folder. "If a new hire makes interesting faces over a small sheaf of introductory paperwork, what do you expect of me for founding an entire new division?"

"Oh, wow. You're gonna be pissed."

"Already am." He exhaled, then laughed. "Well, then. Let's get on with it, shall we?"

. . .

Doctor Stephen Strange put his hands together, palms separated only by the thin leather of his gloves and connected by the soft green aura of the spell woven throughout this secret chamber connected to the Sanctorum by one of his countless dimensional paths. It was stable, the enchantment, and he nodded silently to himself, satisfied. He opened his eyes for the visual examination, looking at the five women encased in magic ice. They slept in their prisons, their minds at something passing for peace. In their dreams, over slow time, the Vishanti might attempt to woo them into a new life of their own. Much like they had attempted in Centralia… but this time with some actual free will as a component.

He frowned. Well, as much as there was in confinement. Regardless. They were not tormented. He was content with that much.

A second's worth of eternity later, and he stepped onto a new path between the multi-dimensional shatterings that reflected countless versions of the reality he knew. Here the air was thick and oppressive. The Darkhold was trapped in the center of this particular oubliette, the terminus of an aberration that connected from the threads of its twin, the Book of the Vishanti, to here, a place at the end of nowhere, where light and gravity had long since been consumed by the black hole that made up this dimension's core.

It would escape in time. That was its nature. Sooner or later, those yet bound to it would force their way in at the behest of Chaos's Gods, and either in his era or during the next Sorcerer Supreme's, the battle would begin again. After all, the balance between Order and Chaos was in fact an eternal struggle. Neither would win, not for long.

He studied the words that filled the dark, whispers of Chthon attempting to find what had been taken, and he wondered, not for the first time, not for the last, what had been written on the page the last witch of Salem had taken. Fade. What had been her power, in the end? Where had she gone, with that stolen prize?

In time, Strange was certain it would be discovered. In time, this mystery, too, would be resolved.

. . .

The nurse couldn't help but stifle a charmed giggle at the young man leaning against the station's cheap white plastic counter. He'd been flirting hard, and she wasn't going to lie to herself, he was flirting well. It helped that he'd clearly come straight from a practice gig with his band. Under the well-aged and obviously well-loved black leather jacket, a grey band shirt had been artfully sliced down through the gothically-lettered words _RECLAIMERS OF DARKNESS_. It showed off a set of _damn_ fine pecs and nicely defined abs, all of which seemed to gleam like liquid gold in the Florida swelter. She tried to not bite her lip at the peek of a pert little man's nipple.

Everyone had a weakness. The young man pushed a hand through a mop of unruly dark hair as she watched and accepted that weakness in herself, his hair the soft and shiny kind she couldn't help but picture herself offering to help with the job of taming it. _Jesus_.

Responsibility hit her in a flash. Job. Right. _Job_. She took a breath and tried to sound as professional as possible. "I'm really, incredibly sorry-" _oh boy, you don't know how sorry, whatcha doing later?_ "-but visiting hours ended at five."

He slumped, looking somehow even more boyish. The bend got her a glimpse of shallow navel, and a reconsideration of every single one of her morals. "God damn it. It's my fault, we got into the rhythm really hard on this new tune and I lost track of time. Look, I promise Gram I see her every month, Hell or high water and…" He looked sad now, defenseless even. "I know she barely knows I'm there. I know how it is. But I feel like, for her sake, I still need to be there. They keep telling me she doesn't have long."

Room 449, the absolutely ancient New England lady. Never once woke up, the long-timers had told her. She herself had only been working a month or so. Kind of a creepy figure in that room. Hot licks here was the first visitor she'd ever seen. "Well…"

He looked hopefully at her, leaning across the counter, but didn't press.

She puffed a breath, stealing another glance at nature's God-kissed bounty before her. Then she clicked her tongue. "All right. I'll buzz you through, but you've got to promise you'll be quick, and if you get the business for it, it doesn't come back to me."

"On my honor." Hot licks made the full sign of the cross, flashing just a little more skin as he did so. He didn't seem to notice the effect he had. God bless this boy, the sight of him was going to make the rest of her night shift go by that much faster. "Thank you so, so much." He tipped a wink, making the innocent gesture seem somehow dirty. "Never a word. My promise."

She buzzed him through, and oh, hallelujah, how she liked to watch him go.

. . .

At six on a Sunday, it made for midshift and an almost total lack of nurses on the hospice ward. Just as planned. He stalked soundlessly down the hall towards his target, moving now more like the machine he had been trained as for his whole life instead of gliding with the loose, easy hips he displayed everywhere else. Knowing he was in the clear, and out of sight range of every monitoring camera, he snapped the disassembled pieces of the small crossbow back together, picking pieces out of a myriad of hidden pockets. He looked down at the sleek black weapon in his hand, remembering the time when these things weighed damn near a ton, and were unwieldy as hell to boot.

He'd lost one of those a long while back. It was time to pay off the replacement costs. Today. At last. His contacts had confirmed him that what he'd been hunting for decades was indeed _here_ \- and more than that, she'd possibly claimed a dangerous prize. Certainly, his mark was still on her. Even as faint as it was, it had gotten him close. But he needed to be sure - the witch had gotten a drop on him the last time. It wouldn't happen again.

He put his other hand on the closed door. Yes. Fade was inside, at rest within the decaying human host where she'd hid her half-self, her diseased spiritual anchor. Like she had done countless times before. And the prize? It had to be nearby. Taking one more glance up and down the hall for safety's sake, Damien Hellstrom let himself into the cold hospice room, a chamber where the lost too often waited impatiently for Mistress Death.

Fade's host breathed shallowly, a rasp in the still air. One more step. And another, till he looked down into her slack, liver-spotted face. Ferocity rose within his chest, feeling the way she'd torn open his side. He made a kissing noise, sneered when a single eyelid fluttered to take the measure of him.

A slow, deliberate sniff confirmed one unfortunate outcome. The 'prize' - and what else could it be but another scrap of their cursed book - wasn't here in the room. He would know. She'd secreted it away somehow, before he could get here. After the thing in Centralia. Shit luck he hadn't made it there in time. Salem all over again. But, least it sounded like the outcome had been better. He'd have to look into the guys that _had_ shown up, some government group and a couple of _interesting_ auras among them. But not right now. For now, the chase was still on. He'd have to find the stolen page, one way or another. "Want to tell me where you put it?"

Fade swore at him in ancient Atlantean, the words rattling out from the bony throat. In it was the usual dull insults, and at least one sharply targeted one about his parentage. He resisted the urge to strike her before he meant to. Patience first. "Very nice, Fade. But you're on repeats. Want to try it again?"

She stared at him, brittle black and silent now.

"Okay. I'll do it the hard way. That's fine. You know I've got the time for it." Damien lifted the hand with the crossbow and put its bolt right against her forehead. "And just so you know, it took over a century for me to get here, because I wanted to be _damn_ sure I spelled your true name right on the bolt I picked out for you."

The eyes flew wide to their fullest extent, but he pulled the trigger before she could leave the host. The Name boiled through her skull, melting Fade out from the inside. He stepped back, making sure he didn't breathe in any of the old muck she left behind. One impossibly ancient witch fully dead, for certain. For all time. Not too shabby, considering.

Damien looked down at the crossbow in his hand, feeling empty and still a little sad. "For you, Fenna. I promised I'd remember. Maybe not before the judgment of God, He and I don't exactly chat. But I remember." He started breaking down the weapon again as the corpse bubbled away. In a few more seconds, there would be nothing left. No mess for anyone, especially that cute nurse to deal with. Too bad he couldn't call her later for a quick night of fun. The police would be looking for a local rock star that didn't exist, made easier by the fact that he was pretty sure the girl could pick his chest out of a lineup - but not his face. "I keep my promises."

Damien Hellstrom left the empty room behind, not looking to see if the shade of Death Herself had the mercy to claim the unfortunate host. He didn't like to look in that gentle face much, except when he had no choice to. Never staying on that side of Her door for too long, always coming back in a mockery of rebirth.

It wasn't about resentment. The lady was a fine and respectable sort. Hellstrom just didn't like to dwell too long on what he couldn't keep.

He flapped the lapels of his old leather jacket, an artifact from the days when demon-tracking had been sometimes done in dive bars and nightclubs where a guy stood a chance of catching Jimi live, and maybe even Joey Ramone a little later on, and he stalked off into the night to go find himself some more trouble.

That was one steady resource the world could always provide to the immortals. Fresh, enjoyable trouble. Hellstrom's teeth gleamed white and primal, a devilish son forever about an angel's business.

It was going to be a long night. The best kind on Earth.

 _~ Fin_

 _10/25/16_

 _Come out of the ground, not making a sound,_

 _The smell of death is all around,_

 _And the night when the cold wind blows,_

 _No one cares, nobody knows…_

 _~ The Ramones, Pet Sematary_

 _Notes:_

Centralia, Byrnesville, and even Ashland are all real towns in central Pennsylvania, and the fates of the former two are essentially as outlined here… just, minus the demon-haunted bit. However, the state of the roads, the overgrowth, the utter abandonment save for a handful of outliers, the shrine, and even the church are all real locations. And Centralia today has been the visual inspiration for, among other things, the film Silent Hill - although not the original games. Meanwhile, poor Alexander Rae was indeed the founder of the township that later became that doomed little mining city, and his fate was ultimately even worse than you might have wondered about here - he was murdered by an Irish gang called the Molly Maguires in 1868.

Other details, such as references to the folklore of the fancy Pennsylvania Dutch, are also taken from historical sources.

And then we go off the rails. Agatha Harkness, Damien Hellstrom, and the Salem Seven are all taken way off course from the original comics canon. So much so that it's pointless to go line by line. I will say that both Aggie and the Seven have incarnations in the main Marvel universe and also what was called the Ultimates, and I'm honestly perfectly happy to warp it all up here. Damien was reworked to be more in line with the subtler introduction of magic we're seeing in this season of Agents of SHIELD, although I also wanted to give his more fanservicey side a whirl, too. (I'm not kidding, readers of kid!Loki's time on Journey Into Mystery know full well the effect he had on the ladies.)

W.A.N.D. (I use the acronyms so much and I am occasionally very lazy, so I cheat and don't dot 'em properly most of the time) also exists in comics canon and that is the actual breakdown of the acronym, but has thus far been mostly treated as a one-off gag related to the Thunderbolts series. I'm currently doing a disservice to the department's canon director, Pandora Peters, but I haven't forgotten about her, either.

And followers of the series might be vaguely aware I had a near-total psychological meltdown when the current season of the show decided to belly right up to the Darkhold itself - on the day after this fandom version of its origins appeared online. This is 100% coincidence, of course, but what a frickin' weird one. Sadly, I continue to not actually work for Marvel.

This unexpected melding of reality did not affect the writing of this fic in any major way, although it did add some flavor to one of Melinda May's encounters with her own alternate self. And a few other small details.

Happy Halloween. As ever, thank you for reading!


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